Art of Deception
by evilKaishaku
Summary: AU. Chapter 5: Mousse makes his entrance. Mousse fights Kuno in an attempt to impress Shampoo. Ranko, Akane and Ryoga get some training done and why Ranma doesn't gag on Akane's cooking explained. Read if you want, Review if you’re bothered.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½ or any of the characters from Ranma ½. This is simply a non-profit work for amusement purposes.

**ART OF DECEPTION: Chapter 1**

Soun Tendo, a tall, middle aged man with long black hair and a moustache, sat in the family room of his house sorting through the day's mail. Upon noticing a postcard with a picture of panda on the front the rest of the mail was quickly put aside. Turning the postcard over in his hands he read the message that was messily scrawled onto the back of the postcard. 'Hi. Bringing the boy from China. Saotome.' The rest of the mail lay forgotten as Soun ran off to find his daughters with tears now streaming down his face.

* * *

A short, black haired girl, dressed in black silk pants and a blue Chinese style shirt ran through the main street of Nerima. Chasing after her in a seemingly vein effort to subdue her was a portly, middle aged, bald man wearing a white gi and glasses. "CUT IT OUT ALREADY!" she yelled as she jumped into the air to avoid the man's attempt to grab her in a bear hug from behind. Spinning in mid air she and deftly delivered a blow to the man's jaw courtesy of her right foot that sent him skidding on his back through a puddle left behind after the morning's rainfall. Anchoring himself to the ground by slamming his fist through the concrete he used his momentum to flip himself off the ground and into the air before landing on his feet facing the irate girl. 

"I won't cut it out until you start doing what you're told." Replied the man as he moved himself into an offensive stance, preparing to use a more violent means of persuasion.

The girl moved on the defensive as the man lunged forward with several jabs aimed at her face and chest. "I don't care what you say. I'm having nothing to do with this." She said, taking hold of his arm and using his momentum to lift him up and throw him onto his back once again, knocking down a street sign in the process. She walked over to the man's prone form and stood towering over him with her arms crossed. "What were you thinking? Setting up an arranged marriage." She asked, shooting him a scathing glare.

"Why, I was only looking out for my ungrateful son." The man lied brazenly as he got to his feet.

"Did you even stop to consider your son's feelings when you did this?" she asked sarcastically.

Truth be told, he hadn't thought of his sons feelings on the matter, but then again the marriage was never set up for his son's benefit. Whilst knowing that she would know if he was lying, he decided to lie anyway as it would keep her from knowing his motives behind the arranged marriage. "Of course I did." He said with faked honesty, a faked honesty that even after years of practice failed to be good enough to fool anyone but small children.

"Yeah right, you were probably only thinking of your retirement plan." She said with all seriousness. Then again perhaps she already knew his motives behind the arranged marriage, time to think of something else. Just as he was about to open his mouth to let out a newly concocted lie she cut him off. "Save it. I've got better things to do than listen to you." She turned on her heel and started to walk away from him as she gave her parting words "I'm going to go find..."

Never one to pass up on a golden opportunity, the man took advantage of her turned back by smacking her over the back of the head with the broken street sign, knocking her unconscious, thus explaining her failure to complete her sentence. Having effectively stopped her resistance the man scooped her up and placed her over his shoulder before continuing on his way to their destination.

* * *

Soun Tendo sat across the table from his daughters with the postcard in his hands and a smile on his face. He was the happiest he had been in a long time. The only thing that was darkening his day in the slightest at the moment was his daughters and their... lack of enthusiastic responses. In fact, he held the distinct impression that the youngest of his daughters, a girl of medium height, wearing a white gi, with long black hair tied loosely behind her back with a red ribbon, was angry at the suggestion. Hardly surprising however as she was currently asking, quite heatedly, "Don't WE have some say in who we marry?" 

He was not sure what to make of his middle daughter, a girl with short brown hair who was wearing a red tank top and denim shorts, who was currently looking extremely bored. Eventually his optimism prompted him to accept this as a good sign, she wasn't protesting and she could easily be hiding her true feelings on the matter, positive feelings he assured himself, she was known to keep her true emotions hidden after all.

His eldest daughter, a tall girl with her long brown hair in a ponytail draped over the shoulder of the simple, light blue dress that she wore, spoke up in support of her youngest sister "Akane's right daddy, we've never even met Ranma." Upon hearing this, his youngest daughter, now identified as Akane, cheered up, knowing that her eldest sister supported her opinion.

This also served the purpose of cheering Soun up, his eldest daughter was curious about her possible fiancé, at least that's what he took her statement to mean. His youngest daughter was now in a better mood and he was still running with the idea that his middle daughter was happy with the idea. So it was with an even bigger smile on his face that he announced "That's easily fixed, Kasumi. Ranma and his father have been on a voyage of training. They have just recently returned to Japan after training in China and are on their way here."

"Wow, China." Exclaimed Nabiki, the middle daughter excitedly having finally found something she liked about the fiancé business; he sounded rich, after all they had been travelling around China and that took money. "Is he cute?" She asked in an attempt to find out other positives about her possible fiancé.

"How old is he? Younger men bore me." Kasumi asked, deciding that she may as well learn as much about Ranma as she could.

"Probably a stupid jerk." Grumbled Akane, though mainly just to have her voice heard.

Soun's joyous mood continued to grow as his daughters started to show interest in their possible fiancé. He was about to open his mouth to answer their questions when he realized he didn't know anything about Ranma. His smile disappeared and his face became serious as he finally replied "No idea, I've never met the boy."

Nabiki was about to verbally abuse her when the sounds of a struggle was heard coming from the direction of the main gate to the Tendo compound. Nabiki and Soun stood up quickly from the table and ran to the front entrance of the house where they saw a man in a white gi carrying a struggling younger person, whose gender they could not make out from their viewpoint, over his shoulder. "LET GO of me you old fool." Said the black haired individual as they pounded on the man's back from where she was still held over his shoulder.

"Saotome." Greeted Soun as he walked up to his old friend, completely ignoring the person on his shoulder.

"Tendo." Grunted the man in response as he finally put down the person he held over his shoulder.

"And you must be Ranma." said Soun as he walked up and hugged the person, knocking the wind out of their stomach, who he assumed was a boy, at least he did until he noticed her breasts pushing against his chest as he hugged her. When that realization sunk into his brain he passed out and keeled over backwards.

Watching her father fall to the ground unconscious for an unknown reason spiked her interest and she walked away from where her sisters had just joined her and over to the black haired girl. Upon reaching her Nabiki noticed the girl's curvy frame and reached out and poked her in the chest confirming her suspicion. Turning to look at her sisters Nabiki said flatly "Our _fiancé, _is a girl."

* * *

Soun awoke to the sound of the wind chime ringing quietly as it was blown about in the breeze. Tears started to roll down his face as he thought of how his greatest dream would now be left unfulfilled. "Oh poor daddy, he's so disappointed." Said Kasumi as she started to wipe his forehead with a damp cloth. 

"_He's_ disappointed! Some fiancé this is." Nabiki said jerking her thumb in the girl in questions direction.

"Stop it you two. He... SHE..." she forcefully corrected herself before continuing "is our guest." Akane said unintentionally cutting off the girl off as she rushed to her defence.

Nabiki took no heed of what Akane had said and shifted her focus from Kasumi to her Father. "This is all your fault daddy. You should have made sure." She said heatedly.

This brought Soun out of his stupor as he quickly tried to defend himself "Well he said he had a _son_." That was when it clicked, Saotome was the cause of his troubles, he was the one who said he had a son, he was the one who had brought his dream to ruins. His head seemed to grow several times its natural size as the anger quickly built up inside of him. "GENMA!" Soun said as his giant head took on a appearance that you would only expect to see in a horror movie. In the next instant he was on his feet and dove at Genma, dive tackling him through the open shoji doors.

By this time the girl was getting frustrated at having been ignored so long and so it was no surprise that after listening to her father and her host brawling in the back yard, a fight that the other occupants of the room were watching intently, her anger blew up. "WILL YOU TWO JUST STOP IT ALREADY." The two fathers stopped instantly and looked at her in shock from where they lay on the ground with their hands on each others throats. "Pop, let go of his neck come in here and explain things." Though she spoke in a calm voice, her anger now temporarily vented, her father, still in shock from her sudden outburst, did, for once, as he was told.

When everyone was again assembled around the table in the family room Genma cleared his throat and spoke in a lecturing tone. "I guess I should start from the beginning. I'm Genma Saotome. And this is my daughter Ranko." He said gesturing at the black haired girl sitting beside him.

"SAOTOME." Yelled Soun, his head once again inflated to a monstrous size. "You said you had a son." He said producing the postcard and shoving the backside of it right in front of Genma's face.

"I do. I do." Said Genma as he made warding motions with his hands in an attempt to placate Soun. "I'm sure the boy will turn up sometime soon, he wanders off from time to time but he always turns up soon enough." he further explained.

"You know this situation could have been avoided if you had just mentioned that you had a son _and_ a daughter Saotome." Soun said in irritated voice.

Genma just laughed it off. The laughter died off in his throat as he noticed the shadow that now loomed over him. "You mean you didn't even mention me oyaji." Ranko said with a feral growl accompanied by a look that promised immense physical pain in his very near future. From that point on it was unanimously decided by the Tendos that they should continue this after Ranko had finished beating up Genma, and when Genma regained the use of his jaw they amended as they heard the crack that sounded through the air as Ranko punched Genma in the jaw.

* * *

As Akane watched Ranko swiftly and severely beat her father into unconsciousness she felt a certain kinship with her. She had finally found another girl her age whose passion for martial arts matched her own. Ten minutes after Genma had been knocked out Ranko decided that he had received enough punishment and finally finished her assault on him. As Ranko walked back into the house Akane got to her feet and walked over to her and offered her hand to Ranko. "Hi. I'm Akane. You want to be friends?" After hearing Ranko's positive response Akane took her newly found friend on a tour of the Tendo compound as they got to know each other.

* * *

The tour had ended, rather conveniently, at the dojo where Akane and Ranko now stood facing off against each other in the middle of the room. "So you practice karate too?" Akane asked as she watched Ranko take up an identical stance to her own. 

"Among other styles." Shrugged Ranko offhandedly. "I'm ready to start whenever you are." Ranko stated as she firmed her stance.

Wasting no time Akane quickly responded "Okay." Before rushing at Ranko and starting off her offensive with a few simple jabs aimed at Ranko's face and upper chest. Ranko blocked all of the punches with a practiced ease before responding with a simple front kick with the goal not of attacking but breaking Akane's offensive. When Akane broke off her attack and left herself open Ranko came in an attempt to kick her in her unprotected stomach. Her attack however came too late and Akane was able to close the hole in her defence and block the attack with her forearm at the last second.

Ranko kept her foot firmly pressed against Akane's forearm until she leapt backwards to give herself space. Akane gently rubbed her arm sure that there was going to be a bruise there later before focusing her attention back to Ranko. She slowly shuffled her way towards Ranko as she tried to determine her next attack. As Ranko had remained perfectly still she felt confident enough to move into arms reach before suddenly dropping into a spinning trip kick. Ranko jumped up into the air easily avoiding the sweep. Akane continued to spin all the way around, standing back up as she did so, before sending a spinning back heal kick at the still airborne Ranko. Unfortunately Akane left herself open as she spun around to continue her attack and so Ranko landed a kick on Akane's shoulder at the same time that Akane's kick sent her sprawling to the ground.

Ranko got to her feet, facing away from Akane, and rubbed at her sore ribs where Akane's kick had landed just a few inches underneath her armpit. She rolled to her right as she heard the sound of Akane's feet rapidly slapping against the dojo's wooden floor and managing to avoid the knee strike aimed for the centre of her back. After missing the attack she had devoted herself to Akane lost her balance temporarily and Ranko was able administer two powerful spin kicks to her stomach driving the wind out of her. It took Akane just over a second to recover from Ranko's last attack and she was able to drive an unprepared Ranko back with an elbow strike before she was able to simulate a disabling blow to end the match.

Akane started on the offensive again slowly backing Ranko towards one of the dojo walls with various kicks and punches. As Akane attacked she left numerous holes in her defence allowing Ranko to deliver multiple blows to vulnerable areas to Akane's front. Ranko didn't get off free in the exchange however as while she was counter attacking Akane she left herself open and Akane was able to land a blow for every two or three hits Ranko landed. When Ranko's back eventually bumped into the wall of the dojo she had to do to the side to avoid the powerful punch Akane threw her way in an attempt to end the match. Ranko was able to easily avoid the attack but the dojo wall was not as fortunate as it now had Akane's fist through it.

Ranko was able to land two blows to Akane's exposed back before Akane was able to pull her hand free of the wall. Akane kept her eyes on Ranko as she slowly made her way back to the centre of the dojo with Ranko following a few steps behind her. Once both of them were back in the centre of the dojo Ranko recommenced the fight by feinting a jab with her right hand before snapping her left leg into Akane's side as she dodged to the right to avoid the punch. Akane caught Ranko's follow up punch in her hand and heaved backwards pulling Ranko into an over the shoulder throw sending her into the air arcing towards one of the dojo walls. Ranko spun in midair so that she was able to spring off the dojo wall back towards where Akane was charging towards her. Akane leapt up in midair and slammed her knee into Ranko's stomach at the same time Ranko's fist connected with her chin leaving them both to fall to the ground in a tangled heap.

"Want to call it a draw?" Akane asked as she attempted to get up from underneath where Ranko was lying on her.

"Sure." Ranko said as she tried to get up off of Akane only to find her arm was under Akane's body. She rolled off of Akane and waited for her to sit up before doing so herself.

"You're pretty good." Akane said with a smile that didn't seem to belong on her face considering that bruises were already starting to show up on her skin.

"You're pretty good to." Replied Ranko with a smile that looked just as out of place on her face as Akane's did on hers.

After that they sat there chatting idly for a few minutes before the heard Kasumi's call of "Lunch is ready." drifted in from the house. Upon hearing this they slowly got to their feet before hobbling their way into the house.

* * *

After lunch Ranko and Akane quickly washed up before soaking in the furo while the others, excluding Nabiki, worked on getting the Saotomes settled in. Genma moved his belongings, a single large backpack, into the, larger, downstairs, guest room that he and Ranma would be sharing, Soun moved Ranko's things into the upstairs guest room and Kasumi rolled out three futons to air. After Ranko and Genma had unpacked their belongings everyone regathered in the family room on Soun and Genma's request. 

"Can we get this started already?" Said an irritated Nabiki, wanting to get back to checking over her stock portfolio, earning a collective nod from her sisters and Ranko.

"It's good to see that your daughters are so enthusiastic about the arranged marriage, Tendo." Said Genma mirthfully, slapping Soun on the back in celebration. Sighing, the girls mentally chastised themselves for not realizing that this would be what their fathers had called them together for.

"Indeed, Saotome." Soun agreed, barely able to hold back the flood of tears threatening to flow down his face. He took a moment to recompose himself before continuing. "Anyway, we have called you all here to decide which of you will be Ranma's fiancée."

"Shouldn't Ranma be here for this? After all this affects him too." Kasumi asked in a subtle attempt to forestall this conversation until they could find a way to talk the fathers out of the arranged marriage idea.

"There's no need, we will simply chose the one of you most likely to get along with Ranma. He will abide by our decision." Said Genma in a voice clearly stating, that for once, he was telling the truth.

"Yeah right," snorted Akane, "as if anyone would want their marriage arranged for them."

"It's a matter of family honour that the Tendo and Saotome schools are united by marriage." Said Genma in a manner one would normally use when stating an irrefutable fact.

"And that's supposed to mean what exactly?" Asked Nabiki, left wondering what someone else meant for the first time in many years.

As Genma just sat there with a smug grin on his face Ranko felt obligated to answer Nabiki's question. "Ranma puts honour above pretty much everything, he's almost honourable to a fault, if he has to get married to someone, even someone he doesn't even like, to preserve family honour he'll do it."

The room was filled with a contemplative silence for a moment before Soun spoke up again. "Alright, back to the matter at hand. Now Saotome, why don't you tell us more about Ranma."

Genma thought carefully about all of the things he knew about his son before replying "He's one of the best martial artists of his generation."

After waiting two minutes it became clear that Genma was not about to add anything else to his description of Ranma so Soun turned to Ranko for help. "Ranko, can you please... elaborate."

Sighing at Genma's single-mindedness Ranko proceeded to further describe Ranma. "He's my age, we're twins, just over a head taller than me, black hair, normally in a pigtail, fairly muscular, likes to wear Chinese clothes, strong headed, and as pop said, martial arts obsessed."

"Any other interests?" Nabiki asked lazily, being engaged to a stranger was bad enough without him having a one track mind for martial arts.

"Not that I know of." Replied Ranko awkwardly.

The room again fell silent, this time it was Nabiki who broke the silence. "Well it sounds like Akane's the one for him, they're both martial arts obsessed." She said, quite happy to dump the engagement on her little sister in order to get herself out of it.

Akane tried to protest but was cut off as Kasumi quickly followed suit. "And they're the closest in age."

"It's agreed then," Soun said with finality "Ranma will be engaged to Akane. Now that business is out of the way, Saotome, let's pull out the shogi board, pour some sake, and celebrate."

* * *

Ranko awoke to the sound of tapping on the guest room window. Sitting up in her futon Ranko made a mental note to herself to buy an alarm clock as all she able to discern about the time was that it was late. Getting to her feet she walked the short distance to the window and drew back the curtains revealing a dark figure hanging upside down from the roof tiles. Sliding the window open she gestured for the person to enter, muttering under her breath about people choosing more convenient times to show up. Ranko then walked over towards the door and turned on the light revealing a tall boy with black hair tied up in a pigtail, wearing black ankle tie pants with a red silk shirt, leaning against the wall next to the open window. 

"Where's your stuff?" Ranko asked noticing the lack of his travelling bag.

"Just up on the roof, I'll go and get it now." Ranma replied before leaping out the window, grabbing hold of the roof and swinging himself up onto the roof, before returning just seconds later with a large backpack slung over his shoulders.

"How did you know I was in this room anyway?" Ranko asked curiously.

"I didn't. I just decided to choose random windows and worked my way through them knowing I'd find your room eventually." He said as he put down his backpack revealing a sheathed katana strapped to his back.

"You did what? You'd better not have woken anyone else up." Ranko hissed at him as she hauled him off the ground by the collar of his shirt.

"Don't worry. Yours was the first window I tried." He replied as his face broke out into a smile.

"Jerk." She replied, smacking him over the head with her spare hand before roughly throwing him against the wall. "You knew I was in this room didn't you, you just wanted to get me mad." Ranma's growing smile was answer enough. "Why didn't you wait until morning to come here?" Ranko asked as her anger started to ebb away.

"I figured I could talk to you and find out why we're here the easy way instead of waiting for something to blow up in my face and finding out that way, because you know oyaji doesn't tell me a thing until it's too late." He sighed.

Ranma stood up stiffly and started to walk towards the door as Ranko starting laughing out loud at his proclamation. "Hey, where do you think you're going?" asked Ranko as she moved to block the door.

"I'm going to go relieve some stress." Ranma said with a sinister snarl as he attempted to push past Ranko.

"You can beat on pop tomorrow, if you do it now you'll wake everyone else up." Ranko said, herding Ranma away from the door.

After a few minutes of trying to push past Ranko to no avail Ranma plopped down heavily on the floor once again. "Since you're not letting me beat up on oyaji you may as well tell me what he's done so I can come up with a fitting punishment."

"Firstly, we start school tomorrow morning." Ranko said before falling silent and waiting for Ranma to prompt her for the second thing.

"That's not so bad." Ranma said contemplatively. "Okay, what else is there?" he asked heatedly as he heard Ranko's snicker.

"You're engaged." Ranko said breaking out into full laughter, she quickly recomposed herself however as she had to once again stop a silently fuming Ranma from going to throttle Genma.

Once Ranko had managed to get Ranma seated again he uttered a single word "Explain."

"It seems pop arranged a marriage between his and Mr Tendo's unborn children around twenty years ago and since Mr. Tendo only had daughters and you're pops' only son you're bound by family honour to marry one of his daughters. It's been decided that you'll marry Mr Tendo's youngest daughter Akane, she's our age and she seems pretty nice." Ranko explained. "In case you're wondering, she isn't happy about the situation either." Ranko added as Ranma slammed his fist into the floor. "Now if that's all your questions I'm going to go to sleep, we've got school tomorrow and I'm sure pops gonna wake me up early for training." Ranko said as she crawled back into her futon and pulled the covers over herself.

"Don't worry Ranko; I'm sure you'll get to sleep in tomorrow. I think oyaji's gonna be too sore to spar with you tomorrow." Ranma said, cracking his knuckles ominously.

* * *

As Ranma had predicted Ranko was allowed to sleep in and so by the time she came downstairs everybody else was already sitting down for breakfast and getting to know Ranma. 

Akane had decided, after Ranko had put a good word in for him, to be civil to Ranma at least until she was able to determine if he was a decent person who was simply stuck in a bad situation he had no real control over or a pervert who would try to take advantage of the situation. "Why were you beating up your father this morning? Is it a family sport or something?" Akane asked Ranma after having watched Genma being kicked around the backyard twice in as many days.

"I guess it's kind of a sport, mainly I just do it for its therapeutic value though." Ranma replied and was about to continue before Akane interrupted him.

"Therapeutic value?" Akane asked as she scratched her head in confusion.

"Yeah, you see last night I found out that I was engaged, without my permission, to someone I didn't even know and I, understandably, got stressed." Ranma started and then waited until Akane nodded in understanding before he continued. "So I used oyaji as a moving punching bag to relieve my stress. I can understand if you don't want to hurt your father so if you need to de-stress feel free to vent your stress on oyaji." Ranma continued eliciting a hesitant nod from Akane and protest from Genma, which was ignored by all.

Ranko noticed something unusual as she sat down and started to eat but wasn't able to put her finger on it straight away. She snapped her fingers upon figuring out and turned to Genma and asked cheekily "Ranma got you pretty good huh? You didn't wake me up for training and you're not even bothering to try and steal my food."

"Ungrateful children." Genma muttered under his breath as he continued to nurse his sore arm and ribs while he ate.

"Well, I'm off to school, I'll see you three later." Said Nabiki as she got up from the table and headed out the door on her way to school to set up the mornings betting pools. After saying a quick goodbye everyone returned to finishing off their own meals. It was ten minutes later that Akane, Ranma and Ranko headed off to school together leaving their fathers to start celebrating their perceived acceptance of the engagement and Kasumi to try to keep them from messing up the clean house.

* * *

Akane walked to school, with Ranma and Ranko, dressed in her school uniform which consisted of a white blouse under a blue dress that reached just past her knees. "Why are you carrying a sword with you?" Akane asked incredulously as she looked up at where Ranma was walking along a chain link fence wearing his trademark black ankle tie pants and red silk shirt with said katana hanging over his shoulder by a leather strap attached to each end of its sheath. 

"I got used to having it with me while I was wondering around China by myself. It does a great job of deterring bandits." Ranma replied without turning to look at her.

"I thought the three of you were training in China together." Akane questioned Ranko who was currently dressed in one of Akane's spare school uniforms.

"We were at the beginning of the trip but then Ranma started wanting to go to different dojos and training grounds than pop, so he went off on his own a whole lot, he'd always rejoin us two or three weeks later hang around for about a week before taking off again." Ranko explained.

"I would've left for longer but I had to make sure oyaji hadn't gone and sold you for food or something worse." Ranma added from atop of his perch on the fence.

"Yeah right, you probably just didn't want pop to teach me something he hadn't taught you." Ranko replied playfully.

"Maybe." Ranma replied cryptically while adding silently to himself 'Though I was more worried that he might have taught you some of stuff that he _taught _me.'

"Come on, you're father wouldn't sell Ranko for food, would he?" Akane asked, worried about the type of person that was now living at her house.

"He would've stolen her back afterwards if it's any consolation." Ranma replied seriously. "At least, that's what he did with me the few times I can remember him doing it."

"That's not true is it Ranko?" Akane asked, pleading that Ranma simply had a bad sense of humour and was just joking.

"I don't know. Ranma says it happened before I joined him on the training trip and I'm pretty sure he's telling the truth, either that or he just misunderstood what happened because he isn't lying, you can tell when he is, couldn't lie to save his life." Ranko sighed.

"Wait a minute, weren't you on the training trip with Ranma from the start?" Akane asked, happy to move onto lighter topics.

"Nah, I only joined up with them around four years ago when it became obvious to mom that I was really interested in martial arts, before that I only got to go to local dojos. Ranma's been travelling around with pop since he was, what? Four? She replied, directing the last bit to Ranma.

"Around that I guess." Shrugged Ranma having already lost interest in the conversation a few minutes ago.

After a few more minutes of walking Akane noticed the school building looming up ahead. "Listen, when we get to school, there's going to be a fight and I want you two to stay out of it okay?" she said, turning her head in their direction just long enough to get their affirmative nods before building herself up into a full paced run towards the school gates with Ranma and Ranko following behind her.

Upon reaching the school grounds Ranma leapt up onto the gatepost just as Akane started to tear into a group made up of roughly fifty boys dressed in various sporting outfits and armed with various sports equipment. "Looks like you've found a training partner perfectly suited to you Ranko." Ranma commented as Akane delivered a particularly harsh blow to a boy dressed in a gi when he left a slight hole in his defence.

"How's she perfectly suited to me?" Ranko asked distractedly as she watched Akane narrowly avoid a powerful strike from a kendoist's shinai. "Shouldn't we be helping her?" Ranko asked after shaking her head free of distractions.

"She's perfectly suited to you as a training partner because she has a good offensive style but sorely lacks defence and you have the opposite problem. And she said she didn't want us to interfere and she's winning the fight so there's no need for you to step in." Ranma replied unconcerned about the carnage taking place in front of him.

In just over a minute Akane stood victorious, surrounded by the twitching forms of the boys who had been laid flat by her. "I really wish they'd give up already." Akane huffed as she caught her breath in preparation of what she knew was coming.

"Truly, they are such a boorish lot." Said a tall boy wearing a dark blue hakama as he stepped out from behind one of the trees in the school grounds carrying a bokken in his right hand and a red rose in his left. "Evidently each of them intends to ask you out on the dawn that they finally defeat you." He said, radiating arrogance from every ounce of his being.

"I don't have time for this today upperclassman; I have to take these new students to the office for administration." Akane said gesturing in the general direction of Ranma and Ranko hoping that she would be able to avoid fighting the current bane of her existence.

"Don't worry fair Akane," he replied throwing her the rose before grasping hold of his of bokken with both hands and drawing it up into a ready position "I'm sure that such matters can wait the short time that our fight will take."

"Don't rush beating him up on our account." Ranko said cheerfully as she and Ranma walked towards Akane, quite happy to have Akane beat up the person that had already managed to irritate her with his smugness in the two minutes she had known of him.

"I'm in no hurry to get to class." Ranma added also happy to let Akane beat up a person he had never met before. Though his reasons were more innocent than Ranko's, he simply wanted to see how good Akane's skills were when she took on an opponent roughly at her own level of skill.

"Stay out of this fiend." Said the, as of yet, unnamed samurai wannabe as he levelled his bokken at Ranma. "What relation have you to my beloved Akane Tendo?"

"Our parents are good friends, so we're staying at their house for a while." Ranma replied calmly, having gotten used to weapons being pointed at him threateningly after years of it happening on a semi-regular basis.

"I see, you carry a sword and are living under the same roof as my beloved, no doubt you believe yourself to be a warrior worthy of such a fair maiden, but I will not have it, I will best you to show you that she is mine. What is your name, I wish to know the name of my foe before I cut him down. Ah but it is the custom to give ones own name first, fine then, mine I shall give. My name is Upperclassman Kuno, junior group E. Captain of the Kendo club. Undefeated new star of the high school fencing world. But my peers call me... the blue thunder of Furinkan high." He said striking a noble pose, or at least trying to.

"Ranma Saotome." Ranma replied simply as he was still trying to figure out half of what Kuno had said.

"I hope for your sake that you know how to use that sword of yours samurai wannabe." Said Kuno as he prepared to lunge forwards at his target.

"Hey, I'm not the one wearing the hakama. Besides this is only for decoration." Ranma replied indicating to the katana on his back in an attempt to lower Kuno's hostilities.

"Then it shall be an easy victory." Said Kuno as he lunged forwards in an attempt to strike Ranma down, as he had proclaimed he would, when Akane, not trusting Ranma's fighting ability and being thoroughly pissed off at Kuno once again, stepped into his path and cleaned him up with a single kick to the side of his head.

"Thanks for the save." Ranma said, thankful that he was not made to take care of the deranged kendoist himself. "The sword is supposed to be a deterrent to people who want to fight me not an invitation to people to fight me."

"Don't worry about him, he's not living in the same world as the rest of us. Now let's go, I have to take you two to the office and then go to class." Akane said as she started walking towards the main school building.

"May as well go and get this over with." Ranko agreed as she hurried up to catch up to Akane with Ranma following along behind her.

* * *

Ranko and Ranma sat in the administration office waiting for the receptionist, a brunette wearing a black skirt, red blouse and glasses, to bring them their enrolment forms. "You can't read or write?" Ranko asked Ranma wryly. 

"Oyaji didn't consider reading or writing important to my training, so he never taught me." Ranma shrugged.

"Whatever." Ranko sighed in agreement as the receptionist returned with the forms. Ranma sat back and waited in silence while Ranko to fill out her forms. It was roughly ten minutes later that Ranma was pulled out his thoughts by Ranko as she started to shake him. "Hey, Ranma what gender are you?" Ranko asked with a large smile on her face as soon as she had received Ranma's attention.

Ranma grimaced, not liking having his manhood brought into question, even as a joke. "Last time I checked I was male, but since that could have changed, I'll check." Ranma replied sourly before patting down his chest rather loudly. "Feels like I'm still male to me." Ranma said, feeling a little happier now.

"Maybe you're just flat chested." Ranko replied teasingly as she ticked the appropriate box.

They both fell silent again until Ranko finished filling out Ranma's forms and calling out to the receptionist who came, collected the forms and returned to her desk.

"Ranma, you can't read or write. Is that correct?" the receptionist asked upon her return some several minutes later. "I think the easiest thing to do will be to put you into class as normal and have someone arranged to teach you how to read and write. You will, of course, be exempt from written tasks until such time as you learn to read. Does that sound okay to you?" She asked upon receiving Ranma's nod in the affirmative. Ranma once again responded positively. "Okay, I'll just go fill out the paperwork necessary and then I'll take the both of you to class." She said before once again returning to her desk.

"That was surprising; I thought you'd be put into a remedial class or something." Ranko said after the receptionist had left.

"Yeah, but what I find really surprising is that no one seems bothered by my sword." Ranma replied after shrugging Ranko's statement off. Ranko just shook her head as Ranma showed just how much interest he had in his education.

* * *

"Could I have a word with you please Nabiki." Said Kuno, now dressed in school uniform, black trousers and a plain white shirt, as he strode up to where Nabiki sat at her desk waiting for class to start. 

Nabiki, smelling a profit coming her way, was quite happy to oblige. "What do you want?" Nabiki said in her business voice.

"I wish to know what you can tell me about the vile creature known as Ranma Saotome." Kuno said as he dug into his pocket for his wallet.

"Five thousand yen please." Nabiki said as she placed her hand out awaiting her payment which she quickly counted then pocketed as soon as she received it. "He's Akane's fiancé." Nabiki told him straight away, knowing that he would run off and seek vengeance instantly allowing her to make a greater profit when he returned later to find out the rest of the information she knew about Ranma.

Nabiki wasn't disappointed, Kuno reacted as she knew he would. "FIANCE! I will not allow it." Shouted Kuno as he Ran from the classroom to retrieve his bokken before searching for Ranma.

* * *

Kuno burst into the class that Ranma, Ranko and Akane were in, gasping for breath after having burst into most of the rooms in the school in his search for Ranma. "Never Ranma Saotome, shall I accept your engagement to Akane." Kuno said as he grabbed proper hold of his bokken. He was unable to attack however as Ranma and Akane's classmates, with the exception of Ranko, swarmed around them upon hearing Kuno's announcement. 

Ranko walked up to Kuno as he yelled at the 'peasants who dared block his path' and punched him in the face. "What is your problem?" She asked as she removed his fist from his face.

Kuno took notice of Ranko for the first time, having ignored her earlier as his focus was on Ranma, and temporarily forgot about Ranma as his deluded mind came to the conclusion that Ranko wished to date him. "A challenge is it? Fine then, I accept. Should you win I shall let you go out with me." He said unknowingly raising Ranko's temper.

After shuddering violently at the image Kuno's words put in her head she ran to the window, turned to Kuno and said "Whatever. Follow me." Before jumping out the window and landing lightly on her feet. Kuno complied and followed her out the window, landing hard and hurting his legs in the process. Ranko gave him time to recover, wanting to be able to hurt him as much as possible herself. As soon as Kuno recovered sufficiently from his fall he charged at Ranko with his bokken held overhead.

Ranko caught the bokken between the palms of her hands as Kuno swung it down at her before kicking him in his now unguarded ribs with all her might as she let it go sending him tumbling along the ground. Kuno slowly picked himself up and dusted himself off before charging at her again with a horizontal swipe that Ranko jumped over, tagging him in the head with her fist as he passed beneath her.

As Kuno shook his head to clear the forming dizziness Ranko ran at him and kicked him in the shoulder blade knocking him over. As he was still getting up Ranko decided to take pity on him and finish it with her next blow, an axe kick to the back of the head knocking him out. She picked up his unconscious body and placed him up against a nearby tree before heading back to class. She made it back to class just as the teacher started to gain control over the unruly class. In the chaos, no one had even noticed her leave.

* * *

Ranma slowly lowered himself into the hot water of the furo. While his body was relaxing in the hot water he started to meditate to relax his mind as well, reducing his awareness of his surroundings. He was reminded of his surroundings some minutes later as an ear piercing scream broke him out of his meditation. His curses were drowned out by the sound of the door that separated the inner and outer bath being slammed oped then shut in rapid succession. He waited until he heard the outer bath door being opened and closed violently before reluctantly pulling himself out of the furo so that he could defuse the situation. 

After drying himself off and putting on a change of clothes Ranma walked out of the outer bath and up the stairs before walking up to and knocking on Akane's bedroom door. After a minute of waiting in silence he tried again. "C'mon Akane, open up." He said.

He stood there for a few seconds before he heard the sounds of footsteps behind the door. As the door started to open he relaxed thinking that he may have caught a break for once. That thought was driven out of his head courtesy of an oversized mallet being brought down onto his head accompanied by the scream of "PERVET."

He shakily pulled himself to his knees as he rubbed the lump that was starting to form on his head. "Couldn't you at least have given me a chance ta explain things before hitting at me?" Ranma asked grumpily.

"What's to explain pervert." Akane hissed angrily as she stared spitefully at Ranma.

"Hey, you walked in on me." Ranma shot back in his defence.

"You didn't put the sign up." Akane said, quickly shooting down Ranma's defence.

"Oops." Ranma replied elegantly. Having won the argument Akane went to shut the door only to close it on Ranma's foot. "I can prove I'm not a pervert if you just let me talk to you." Ranma said desperately, not wanting another person added to the long list of people out to kill or maim him.

"Alright." Akane said eventually as she opened the door to let Ranma in, keeping her mallet ready.

"I want you to promise that you won't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you, okay?" Ranma said as he entered Akane's room pulling the door shut behind him.

* * *

Genma was confused as he sat down at the table awaiting dinner that evening, he could feel the ominous aura being projected from the Tendos currently gathered at the table but could sense no danger nearby. Adding to his confusion was the fact that Kasumi, who he had assumed to be the family cook, was sitting at the table with everyone else. "Why is everyone so gloomy?" he asked with a chuckle, at least he tried too, the chuckle dyed in his throat. 

"Everyone just a little anxious about Akane cooking." Kasumi said, the lack of her usual serene voice the only indication needed to know it was a vast understatement.

Akane soon came out from the kitchen carrying a large tray and bowl, the tray looked to be holding a pile of black rubber, the bowl was full of what seemed to be burnt rice. Akane looked at the others expectantly as she waited for them to taste her food, the fact that it was food was not debatable, it was food, the edibility of said food however was a different matter.

When no one at the table made a move to eat the food and Akane started to get impatient Genma's self preservation instinct kicked in. "Well boy, show some gratitude to your fiancée and try some." Genma said, using a tried and true technique to determine the safety of a situation, use the boy as a guinea pig. Ranma dug in without hesitation, shocking everybody by the lack of violent convulsions. "How is it boy?" Genma asked in shocked fascination.

"Not bad. Had better." Ranma barely managed to make out around the food he was continually shovelling into his mouth. This put a smile on Akane's face, finally someone who appreciated her cooking. As Ranma was still alive and showing no negative effects after over a minute of eating the others said their prayers and prepared to eat some of the food. They regretted their decision the moment the food touched their mouths and they fell to the ground in agony. Ranma never one to pass up an opportunity to eat food happily started to eat his fathers' share of the food as he tried to figure out what everyone else's problem was.

* * *

A/N: For people interested in reading more of this story, got to be one or two people, I should be updating at least every 3 weeks, if time spent working on this chapter is any indication. This is my first fan fiction so constructive criticism is appreciated as it will probably help improve my writing style. If you think there is a spelling mistake in here somewhere keep in mind that it may just be Australian spelling of the word. Hope you enjoyed this enough that you don't feel you wasted your time in reading it. 


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½ or any of the characters from Ranma ½. This is simply a non-profit work for amusement purposes.

**ART OF DECEPTION: Chapter 2**

The sun had barely been up for half an hour when a dripping wet Ranko followed Genma out of the window she had just thrown him through. "This is really starting to get old pop, don't you think it's time you gave it up." Ranko said as she twirled the recently emptied bucket on her index finger.

Genma straightened his glasses before he responded in one of his many lecturing tones "It's a necessary part of your training girl, a martial artist..."

"...Should be aware of their surroundings at all times." Ranko finished off for him as the bucket connected with his face. "Guess you missed that part of your training." She said as she ran in to attack him just as he was prying the bucket of his face.

* * *

"This is going to be a regular occurrence, isn't it?" Nabiki complained to herself as she groggily made her way downstairs during one of the many, in her opinion, ungodly hours of the morning. Once down the stairs she headed directly to the kitchen in order to get some coffee into her system to help improve her brain functions.

Coffee in hand she entered the family room and sat down facing the open shoji doors to watch Ranko sparring Genma. Her mood improved considerably as she watched, deeming every hit Genma took as retribution for having woken her up. She craned her head around to the side as she heard footsteps coming from the hallway. "How come you aren't out there training with them?" Nabiki asked as Ranma sat down near the table.

"Oyaji has no interest in training me at the moment." Ranma replied as he started to stretch his back and neck.

"He has no interest in training his heir?" Nabiki asked sarcastically as she turned back around just in time to watch Genma taking Ranko's legs out from under her.

"I never said that. I said he has no interest in training me, he's out there training his heir right now." Ranma said, amused at Nabiki's incorrect assumption.

It took a moment for that to sink into Nabiki's awakening mind and when it did she took a double take. "Ranko's the heir to the Saotome School of Anything Goes Martial Arts, not you? Care to explain that?" Nabiki asked sceptically as she turned and looked at Ranma, who was now looking down so that all that was visible of his face was a large smile, intently.

"Me an' oyaji had a fight over my training, he wanted me to do everything his way, but I refused. So in an attempt to make me do what he says, he named Ranko his heir in my place. Probably thought I'd give in immediately. I'd probably be his heir again if I just asked but for now it's a mutually beneficial situation for me and Ranko. Oyaji gives Ranko his full attention so she's improving by leaps and bounds and I don't have oyaji on my back annoying me every second of the day." Ranma explained fully, finishing at the same time that Ranko finished the morning spar by knocking Genma into the koi pond in pay back for his wake up call.

"Is there anyway to make him stop his surprise attacks?" Ranko asked as she walked into the house, now dry after her morning workout.

"Other than waking up before him I don't know any way to stop him. You could try setting a trap at your door but I doubt that'd work more than once." Ranma replied shrugging. "Maybe it just works in my favour." Ranma amended with a laugh, earning him a smack on the head by Ranko as she left to take a bath.

* * *

"Do you have anything planned for today father?" Kasumi asked as she started to serve out breakfast to Soun where he sat at the head of the table.

"Not really, probably just a few games of shogi with Saotome." Soun said joyously as he started to eat; glad to finally be reunited with his long time friend and training partner.

"Sounds like a good idea to me Tendo." Genma enthused from the other end of the table; happy to be living the good life by freeloading off of his friend.

"You sent us to school cause we're going to be staying here for a while, so shouldn't you be out looking for a job to help pay for expenses?" Ranko asked from where she sat in between Akane and Kasumi, attempting to lay a guilt trip on Genma.

While the attempt failed to have any affect on Genma it caused Ranma to start laughing out loud which subsequently caused him to start choking on his food. "As if oyaji could get a job, even if he did he probably couldn't hold it down" Ranma laughed in a hoarse voice after managing to clear his throat.

This did get a reaction out of Genma, an indignant "hey", which was ignored by everybody in favour of Nabiki's bold proclamation. "I'm sure I could get him a job easily, probably before the days through." She said happily as she thought of how much a person like Genma, someone who had probably never done an _honest_ days work in his life, would hate being forced to work. It also served the purposes of further retribution for the sleep she was sure to lose because of his presence and a way to help the not so healthy finances, truly a good situation from her point of view.

"You do realise that he has practically no useful skills that aren't related to martial arts, a wrap sheet a mile long, ruling out jobs requiring background checks, will steal any food in his presence when left unattended, ruling out anything in the food industry, don't you?" Ranko asked Nabiki earning a string of protests from Genma, which was ignored, again.

As soon as Ranko finished speaking Ranma picked up where she left off. "Then you'll need someone to make sure he does the work he's supposed to, even most of the dojo masters we stayed with had trouble keeping him in line."

Nabiki's face fell as Ranma and Ranko listed the various issues she would have to deal with while finding Genma a job. "I can do it. I'll just need to call in a few favours." She said thoughtfully. 'It'll be worth it just to irritate him.' She thought, cheering herself up again.

Kasumi also cheered up at this, less people in the house meant less housework, not that anyone could tell because of her seemingly ever present smile.

"That's good. He won't be able to sit around drinking and playing shogi all day." Akane said, much more open in her happiness over the situation.

"A martial artist must face many hardships," Ranma said in an imitation of Genma's voice "aint that right oyaji." Genma simply sighed about being forced _out of_ unemployment before returning to grumbling about his ungrateful children.

* * *

The walk to school that morning was uneventful for Ranma, Ranko and Akane, Nabiki had gone on ahead early once again to preside over her domain. Upon arriving at the school Ranma leapt up and took perch on the gate post while Ranko stood and watched from just inside the gate as Akane charged towards to the horde, whose number had significantly increased, of boys who had once again decided to start their day on a painful note. There was a slight difference to the usual routine this morning though as roughly half of the mob continued past Akane to start attacking Ranko, almost managing to catch her off guard in her surprise.

As Ranko and Akane started to fight off the groups of boys that were surrounding them they slowly made their way towards each other. Once they reached each other they stood back to back allowing them to dispatch of the 'morning annoyances' with less effort than it would take if they were working separately. With numerous boys being thrown from the crowd every second their numbers dwindled down quickly until there were only a handful of them left. Ranko and Akane split up to quickly finish off the dregs leaving the entire horde lying on the ground moaning in pain.

"Any idea why they're attacking me this morning?" Asked Ranko, not amused with the situation.

Taking Ranko's question as his cue Kuno stepped out from behind the usual tree carrying his bokken and two roses. "Because, my feisty valkryie, they wish to date with you and I would allow no other terms than to seek your hand through combat." Kuno said as he threw Akane and Ranko a rose.

"Mind if I beat on him today Akane?" Ranko asked in an eerie saccharine voice. Turning to face Ranma she asked in the same voice "May I please borrow your sword?" Her smile brightened as she plucked the katana out of the air and drew it out of its sheath. Her mood dampened when she looked at the blade. "A sakaba sword, great." She said dejectedly.

"If you want to kill him just turn it over." Ranma said condescendingly.

Ranko seriously considered the suggestion for a moment before deciding that repeated serious bodily harm would be more enjoyable than killing him. Grabbing proper hold of the sword she waited for Kuno to make his inevitable charge at her. She did not have to wait long as Kuno charged at her while shouting out his feelings of love for both Akane and herself. As Kuno swung his bokken in a downwards slash Ranko raised her sword to block his swing and held it against his bokken in a test of strength. While this was going on Ranko continued to look into Kuno's face with a smile that would have scared anyone who held a greater intelligence than he possessed. After starring him in the face for fifteen seconds she lifted her knee from the ground and introduced it to his groin before dropping it and allowing them to get reacquainted once more, needless to say Kuno collapsed to the ground in pain.

Ranko sheathed Ranma's sword and handed it back to him as the three of them made there way towards the main school building. "That was definitely a lot more fun than killing him." Ranko said happily.

"I'm sure he would've rather been killed if you plan on repeating that though." Ranma replied with sympathy for Kuno as he put his sword back onto his back.

* * *

Nabiki was pulled out of her personal musings as Kuno walked over to where she sat eating her lunch at her desk. Assuming he was there for photos, he usually was, she started to pull out several pictures. "Nabiki, can you tell me why my two loves reject my advances?" He said as he reached the desk.

Putting the pictures back in their place for the meantime Nabiki took a moment to consider who his _two loves_ were. It didn't take long for her to figure it out and when she did she brought out a set of pictures and laid them on the table. "I'm sure I can help you out, but first how would you like some pictures, set of five for three thousand yen." She said happily thinking of the money Kuno's obsessions brought in.

Kuno looked down at the pictures, all containing shots of Akane working out, and quickly pulled out his wallet and handed Nabiki the asked amount before pocketing the pictures.

Before Kuno was able to put his wallet away Nabiki had pulled out another set of five photos and laid them down on the table. "Same price for these ones." Nabiki said with her hand outstretched. When the money was in her hands Nabiki allowed Kuno to pick up the five pictures of Ranko and put them away. "Now what was it you were here for again?" Nabiki asked pleasantly knowing there was more money coming her way shortly.

"I wish to know what is causing my two loves to refute the advances of my noble self." Kuno said after shaking his head clear of the distractions the pictures had caused.

"Five thousand yen." Nabiki said placing her hand out and extracting more money from Kuno. "Have you considered that they might want to be asked out instead of being challenged for a date?" Nabiki questioned, hoping he'd just ignore this suggestion and keep up the morning attacks, she always made a killing on the bets.

"Nay, that could not be the case, two maidens such as they cherish battle as it lets them see who is worthy enough to call them his own." Kuno stated in flat out rejection of the truth just as Nabiki had hoped he would.

"Maybe Ranma is using black magic to control them." Nabiki suggested knowing that it would fit in well with the fantasy that in Kuno's mind passed as reality.

"Yes that explains it perfectly. Tell me Nabiki, what you know of his prowess. I must be prepared if I am to battle so vile a sorcerer." Kuno said as he started to envision his upcoming battle and the glory it would earn him.

"Well I really don't have all that much now information now so give me a few days." She said even as she silently added 'And a large sum of yen.'

"Very well Nabiki, I shall see you again in a few days to get the information I require." Said Kuno as he walked off with a spring in his step, knowing that he would soon be able to free his loves from the vile sorcerer and that when he had done so they would gladly take their rightful place by his side.

* * *

Ranko and Akane made their way across the school grounds to one of the larger trees that lay just inside of the school's boundary wall. Already sitting under the tree eating their lunches were two of Akane's friends, Yuka and Sayuri. Yuka and Sayuri were both of average height and build, Yuka had long brown hair and Sayuri had short lack hair. "Hi guys." Akane greeted as she sat down in the shade of the tree and opened up her bento.

"Hi." Sayuri and Yuka echoed back, acknowledging Akane and Ranko's presence. The next few minutes were spent with Ranko getting to know a little about Yuka and Sayuri and vice versa.

After the introductions were complete the topic of conversation eventually turned to the source of Ranko and Akane's present bane of existence. "Does Kuno forget to take his medication or something?" Ranko asked, hoping this was the case, if it was she was quite willing to shove it down his throat for him.

"I wish. I don't think he's been given his medication yet." Akane muttered dejectedly, she also would've volunteered to force feed kuno his medication.

"And he probably won't be given any because he's rich, meaning he can get away with practically anything." Sayuri added, feeling sorry for her friends.

The conversation continued along these lines until a fifth voice sounded from above them interrupting the conversation. "You two almost sound like you don't like Kuno." The voice then continued on in a poor impersonation of the kendoist in question. "You should be happy that you have won the affection of so noble a samurai who wishes to take care of the both of you."

Ranko rubbed her temples and looked up into the tree already knowing what she would find. Sitting up on one the lower branches of the tree was Ranma relaxing with his eyes closed and his back leaning up against the tree trunk. That changed rather quickly as Ranko hurled her bento at him and hit him in the side of the head knocking him out of the tree. "I don't want that idiot chasing after the both of us." Ranko spat venomously.

Ranma sat up from where he had fallen and started to brush off his clothes as he pondered this for a moment. He clicked his fingers and a large smile started to form on his face as he said "Why, you worried he'll pick Akane over you? Don't worry about that I'm sure he'd be willing to have you as his mistress."

Akane and Ranko's battle auras roared to life lighting them up like they were bonfires as they yelled out "RANMA." Even as they started to tear into him, bending his limbs into unnatural angles, he couldn't help but think it was worth it just to get them so thoroughly pissed off.

* * *

Ryoga Hibiki, a young man wearing dark green pants, thick, long sleeved, yellow shirt and a yellow bandana with black spots tied around his head to keep his hair from his eyes, walked down one of the many streets in Nerima on his quest for vengeance. He carried his large backpack, and attached umbrella, as though it weighed nothing at all. Looking down at the map he was carrying in his hands he tried, once again, to work out where he was, when this attempt failed he looked around for someone he could ask for directions. Seeing a boy that seemed to be dressed in some type of school uniform roughly one hundred metres away he started to walk towards him, fairly confident he wouldn't get lost because there were no obstructions in the way.

When he reached the boy he grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and asked him "Which way is it to Furinkan High School?"

The boy looked at him incredulously for a moment as he tried to work out if he was related to Kuno. When he came to the conclusion that it was quite likely that he was he answered the seemingly stupid question before he got hurt. "This is Furinkan High School." He said nervously as Ryoga continued to look him in the eyes.

A feral smile appeared on Ryoga's face as he heard the good news. "Where is Ranma Saotome?" he asked as his mind was filled with thoughts of getting his long deserved revenge.

His question was answered before the boy could reply as he heard two people simultaneously shout out "Ranma."

"Never mind." Ryoga said as he released his grip on the boy's shirt before bounding over the school fence. Upon landing he quickly looked around and found who he was looking for. He couldn't help but laugh as he saw that his revenge had been handed to him on a silver platter, Ranma was already lying on the ground unconscious looking almost like a pretzel. He Pulled his umbrella out of the straps holding it on to his back pack as he started walking towards his fallen foe. He stood over Ranma's prone form and took a moment to savour the joy that he felt.

"What do you think you're doing?" Ranko asked as she turned to where Ryoga stood over Ranma with his umbrella held in both hands facing down towards Ranma's chest.

"I'm going to take my long awaited revenge." Ryoga said as he tensed up his arms in preparation of driving his umbrella through Ranma's heart. He was tackled to the ground the moment before he was able to finish off his quest. "Hey, what's your problem?" Ryoga asked as he tossed Ranko off himself and stood back up.

Ranko quickly got to her feet and positioned herself in between Ryoga and Ranma. "Your trying to kill my brother, I may be pissed off at him right now but I'd probably feel bad about it later if I just let you kill him without at least trying to stop you. Who are you anyway?" She said as she took up a fighting stance. When Ryoga just laughed at her Ranko took the few steps it took to reach Ryoga and kicked out at his chest. Her foot connected with air as Ryoga back flipped away from her.

"Ryoga Hibiki, now step aside or your going to get hurt." Ryoga said as he moved into his own fighting stance. Ryoga moved forward and tried to kick her in the ribs. He underestimated her skill and was rewarded for it when she leapt over his attack and kicked him in the face driving him back a few feet. Ryoga moved in again, more cautiously this time, and struck her in the side with a kick meant only to knock her out of the way, he had no grudge against her.

As Ryoga started moving towards Ranma once again Ranko leapt at Ryoga with a knee strike that hit him squarely in the side of the head. When Ranko landed she followed up her attack with a few quick jabs to Ryoga's ribs causing him to temporarily shift his focus from Ranma to her. Before Ranko was able to continue her attack Ryoga struck her in the side of the head with his elbow, attempting to knock her out this time.

Ranko slowly got to her feet, her head spinning slightly after being hit in the head with slightly less force than that of a jackhammer. Wasting no time she charged Ryoga once again and started up another rapid exchange of blows managing to come out marginally ahead this time. Ryoga got an idea and slowly started to circle around Ranko, Ranko mirrored Ryoga's movements following him around the circle keeping him an equal distance from herself. A smile appeared on Ryoga's face when he had moved far enough around that he now stood in between Ranma and Ranko. "Gotcha." He said as he threw his umbrella, point first, at Ranma's head.

As the Umbrella flew towards the still unconscious Ranma's head Akane was forced to step in and catch the head of the umbrella with both hands. She successfully caught the Umbrella preventing it from caving Ranma's head in but the impact hurt her hands and threw her off her feet. Seeing that Ryoga seriously intended to kill Ranma and that Ranko was struggling to take him out Akane decided to enter the fight to swing the odds in their favour.

As Akane charged head first at Ryoga Ranko charged in on his back. Akane drove her knee into Ryoga's stomach, doubling him over, as Ranko performed a flying side kick to the back of his head. Both of them were able to continue the attack for a few more seconds allowing them to do heavy damage to Ryoga as he was catching his breath. When he caught his breath he lashed out with his foot, hitting Akane in the side, as he slammed his elbow backwards catching Ranko in the stomach. Having knocked Akane away for a few seconds he turned around and started an offensive on Ranko using various punches, kicks and the occasional elbow strike.

Akane wasted no time in getting to her feet and Attacking Ryoga's exposed back in order to make him stop his offensive and make him deal with the two of them once more. Knowing that if they were able to keep up their double attack he would be taken out shortly Ryoga prepared to make another attempt on Ranma's life. Knocking them both away again, Akane in the direction of Ranma and Ranko in the opposite direction, he took off his belt and snapped it like a whip resulting in it becoming rigid. Taking aim he threw the belt towards Ranma in a low spinning arc before Ranko was able to start attacking his back once more. Akane ran towards Ranma's body, keeping her eyes on the belt, feeling as though everything was in slow motion.

Akane dived and scooped up Ranma's body in mid air and managed to move him to safety just in time, unfortunately her hair, which had been trailing behind, her was severed several inches from her head. As he watched the belt fly through the air Ryoga let his defence down allowing Ranko to knock him out from behind with a knife hand strike to the back of his neck. "I think we'd better get out of here before he wakes up." Ranko panted as she tried to catch her breath. Akane merely nodded her head in agreement, still shaken from having her hair cut and almost being killed, before putting Ranma onto her back and walking through the crowd that had gathered during the fight towards the school gate with Ranko following along behind her.

* * *

Akane sat down on one of the chairs in Dr. Tofu's clinic awaiting treatment for the few, mainly minor, injuries that she had received during the fight. Over in the side of the room Ranko was grilling Ranma, who Dr. Tofu had already treated, as he was treating them in order of most to least injured i.e. he treated Ranma then Ranko and was now moving on to Akane, for information on Ryoga. "I told you I don't know who he is or why he wants to kill me." Ranma said honestly as Ranko continued to pointlessly question him.

"Your just as bad as pop." Ranko said angrily earning a cry of "Hey" from Ranma and Genma, who was there to meet his new employer, Nabiki had come through on her claim, Dr. Tofu.

"Mr. Saotome can you please go make some tea for our patients." Asked Dr. Tofu as he finished up what he could do for Akane. Genma slowly walked out of the room to do as he was asked. He was rather happy with the job, he didn't really have to do much after all.

"Wow oyaji, the doc even allows you to handle food all by yourself." Ranma said as Genma re-entered the room a few minutes later carrying a tray with a tea pot and several cups.

Genma was sorely tempted to _accidentally_ spill the hot tea all over Ranma at that point but, not wanting to risk losing an easy, well paying, job without good reason, he instead made a jibe at him. "How come you were beaten up worse than your sister boy? Don't tell me you've become so weak as to be outclassed by a girl." At this comment Ranma just mumbled various comments under his breath, all of which were some kind of insult or threat to _the_ _useless old man._

As Ranko, Akane and Dr. Tofu were talking happily while drinking their tea, Genma and Ranma were exchanging verbal abuse while they drank theirs, the sound of the front door sliding open could be heard. A few seconds later Kasumi appeared in the room, announcing her arrival with a simple "Good. Afternoon everyone." All conversation with Dr. Tofu was immediately cut off as his glasses started to fog up, signalling that the lights were on but nobody was home.

Dr. Tofu stood up stiffly and walked over to where Genma sat, in a chair usually reserved for patients, and asked rather distractedly "So what seems to be the problem?" Genma was unsure of what was going on, but knew it wasn't good, and started to rub the back of his neck nervously as he tried to think of what to say. "Ah, you're neck is it? Well let's have a quick look at it." Suiting actions to words Dr. Tofu took a firm grasp of Genma's head and tilted it to the side resulting in his head being stuck at an odd angle and a rather large crack. "There it should be all better now."

"I'm just here to return the book I borrowed." Said Kasumi as she proffered the said book.

"T-t-thank you Kasumi." Said Dr. Tofu as he took the book and placed it down on his desk before walking over to, and starting up a conversation with, Betty, his skeleton.

"Doctor." Genma tried to get Dr. Tofu's attention, but failed as he was now dancing around his office with Betty seemingly oblivious of everybody else in the room. "Lousy job. I should be getting danger pay for this." Genma said to himself, Ranma couldn't help but smile, he'd found a new punishment for when Genma pissed him off; send Kasumi over to the clinic while he was working.

"Lets get out of here, he's going to take a while to calm down." Akane said as she walked towards the exit.

* * *

Since they had been inside Dr. Tofu's clinic rain clouds had come over and obscured the afternoon sunlight. Ranma, Ranko and Akane walked back towards the Tendo dojo in companionable silence. Ranma broke the silence as the first few raindrops started to fall around them. "I just remembered something that I gotta go take care of." Ranma said before he changed direction and headed towards one of the side streets waving over his shoulder as he left.

After having said their goodbyes Ranko and Akane continued on in silence for a minute or two. "Hey Ranko, is Ranma a good fighter?" Akane asked out of the blue with a small amount of worry in her voice.

"I'm not really sure." Ranko sighed in reply, also worried about something. "I've never actually seen him fight anyone besides pop and fighting him isn't any real indication of skill, throwing a ten yen coin on the ground will distract him from a fight. I don't know how much training he's doing either, I haven't seen him doing any in the few days we've been here."

"Think he could handle Ryoga if he shows up again, it took both of us to get a clear advantage over him and I don't think either of us could beat him by ourselves." Akane said, voicing her worries for Ranma more directly, he was a bit of a jerk, but he was a likeable, non-perverted, jerk.

"I don't know, hopefully we won't have to find out." Ranko was hopeful of this but also doubtful that he would actually stay away.

"So what are we going to do if he turns up again?" Akane asked, already having some idea of what Ranko would say.

"I think it's a matter of when not if. He seems pretty determined to kill Ranma. I guess if he turns up we'll just have to fight him off until we can come up with a more permanent solution or we work out whether or not Ranma can handle him." Ranko said before returning to her thoughts, wondering what Ranma did to get Ryoga so angry and if there were more people like Ryoga after revenge on Ranma.

Ranko and Akane walked the rest of the way to the Tendo dojo in silence. Neither of them noticed the figure that was silently following them from the rooftops, listening in on their conversation with a growing smile.

* * *

Ryoga stood outside the main gate to the Tendo compound with his bag on his back and a smile on his face, he had made it. Sure it was late night or early morning but he had found his way from Furinkan High School to the Tendo dojo in less than a day. Besides revenge didn't know the difference between night and day. He silently leapt over the compound wall and crept his way to the house. He slowly made his way around the perimeter of the ground floor in hopes of finding an open window. He was in luck and was able to open and climb through one of the kitchen windows.

He moved around slowly doing his best to avoid stepping on any creaky floorboards as he worked his way through the rooms on the bottom floor until he found what he was looking for. Lying in the centre of the room were two futons, one of them contained a large figure, not who he was looking for, the other contained a smaller figure and what looked like a pigtail, definitely who he was looking for. He walked over to the head of the futon and said quietly "Wake up Ranma, I'm here to fight you." When that got no response he tried kicking the figure in the futon that also got no response. "It's a shame you won't wake up, I was going to let you die honourably in a fight to the death. Well, it's time to get my revenge so I can move on with my life." After completing his short rant he unlimbered his umbrella from his backpack and hesitated for just a momentbefore slamming the head of it downwards.

He knew something was out of place when the umbrella met almost no resistance. He spun around as he heard a soft tap on the floor behind him and ended up starring at the shadow covered face of Ranma. "Straw dummy." Ranma said simply.

"I would've stayed in hiding if I were you." Ryoga said as he levelled his umbrella at Ranma.

Ranma simply ignored Ryoga and walked past him to the window. "If you wanna fight me follow me, it's in both our interests to fight somewhere else." He said before jumping out of the window. Ryoga had no intention of letting his opportunity to get revenge go to waste so he quickly scrambled out the window after Ranma. Ranma led Ryoga through the deserted streets of Nerima in silence until they arrived at the oval behind Furinkan High School.

"I can understand why it's better for me to fight here, there's no one here to stop me from killing you, but why is it in your interest to fight here?" Ryoga asked as he shrugged his back pack off and tossed it to the side before getting into his fighting stance.

"It doesn't really matter to you." Ranma said simply as he drew his sakaba sword out of its sheath and waited for Ryoga to make the first move. Ryoga built himself into a run at Ranma before stopping a couple of metres short and allowing his momentum to carry him the rest of the distance sliding on his feet as he ducked down and unleashed a flurry of strikes with his umbrella aimed at Ranma's legs and mid section. Ranma easily evaded the strikes by repeatedly pushing himself off the ground backwards from the balls of his feet.

As Ryoga straightened himself up Ranma noticed an opening in his defence and rushed in to take advantage of it. He swung his sword and hit Ryoga right across the chest in what he was sure to be a devastating blow, he'd have to berate Ranko later for having trouble beating this guy. That thought was driven out of his head as he heard Ryoga's laugh. "Your sister hits harder than you do, and she was fighting bare handed." Ranma jumped back quickly to assess the situation, there should have been no way for Ryoga not to get hurt by his attack. "If you're that week there's no way you'll be able to beat me, you probably won't even be able to hurt me, what a let down." Ryoga taunted.

Ranma wasn't about to take that insult lying down so he rushed in again with various swings of his sword and kicking out with his feet. His barrage continued for over a minute with him dancing around Ryoga's attacks effortlessly as his attacks continued to strike various vital areas. Once his attack was finished he pulled back out once more. "I think you may have put a few scratches on me this time Ranma." Ryoga said as he advanced towards Ranma.

As Ryoga closed in Ranma swung his sword horizontally at Ryoga's mid section. Ryoga, feeling invulnerable, decided to have a little fun and jumped upwards and planted his feet down on the back end of the sword, pushing it into the ground. Ryoga screamed out in pain as the sword's blade bit into the flesh on the under side of his foot. "I may not have to hurt you if you're gonna do it for me. Didn't you realise this was a reverse bladed sword when it didn't cut you before?" Ranma asked mockingly as Ryoga jumped backwards, keeping his weight mainly on the uncut foot. "It's good to know I have an effective last resort if it comes down to it." Ranma continued causing Ryoga to snarl in rage.

Ranma ran in for one last attempt at hurting Ryoga with normal attack before he changed his tactics. When he was in close range he plunged the blade into the hard ground of the oval before planting his hands on the sword's grip and leaping off the ground, while still holding onto the sword, and kicked both of his feet into the centre of Ryoga's face before landing gracefully and pulling the sword out of the ground. The attack didn't do any real harm to Ryoga but it did give Ranma the satisfaction of knowing he had broken Ryoga's nose.

Ranma waited for the now enraged Ryoga to move in slowly, the pain of putting weight down on his foot slowing him down, and lunged at Ranma. Ranma jumped over the attack and pushed off of Ryoga's back, knocking Ryoga to the ground, propelling himself in the direction of the grove of trees that was located next to the current battlefield. Ranma was forced to dive out of the way as Ryoga's razor edged umbrella, now opened up, soared passed him in an arc before returning to Ryoga. "Come and get me Ryoga." Ranma yelled over his back as he entered the grove and leapt up into one of the trees to await Ryoga.

Ryoga took his time as he made his way towards the grove and tried to find sight of Ranma amongst the maze of branches. Ryoga moved into the centre of the grove and waited for Ranma to make his move. Ranma silently moved from tree to tree until he was in a tree with a very large branch hanging over Ryoga's head. Ranma flipped his sword over in his hands and used the blade to hack through the large branch in a single swipe sending the large branch to crash down onto Ryoga's head. It took only a little effort for Ryoga to roll the fallen branch of himself allowing him to stagger back to his feet, Ranma had found an effective way to hurt him, now the fight would get interesting.

Ryoga moved himself away from the fallen branch so that it would not impede his movements when he had the chance to strike back. Ryoga pulled numerous bandanas from his head and started to twirl them around his fingers. When Ranma cut down the next overhanging tree branch Ryoga dove to the side and threw his bandanas in the general direction of Ranma and was rewarded as Ranma was cut in numerous places by their sharp edges causing him to get distracted and fall from the trees crashing into the ground. Ryoga took the opportunity to kick Ranma's sword out of his hands leaving him with no way to repeat his successful tactic.

"So planning on finishing me off now?" Ranma asked as he struggled to get back to his feet. "You're supposed to tell your victim your motives before you kill them." Ranma said as his mind raced, trying to decide his next move.

"Alright, I'll consider this your last request." Said Ryoga as he prepared to tell Ranma what he believed he already knew.

* * *

A younger Ryoga, dressed in some type of school uniform, walked down one of the streets of the town he was currently in as he attempted to find his way to school. As he walked past one of the side alleys he heard the sounds of garbage cans being knocked down. Deciding that he had better investigate as someone may be in trouble and need his help he headed into the dark alley. He walked all the way to the end of the alley where he found the cause of the disturbance, a sight that truly shocked him. Pawing through the knocked over garbage cans was a boy around his age whose clothes had been reduced to mere rags revealing trails of blood that covered most of his visible skin. The blood seemed to be gently flowing from small cuts all over his body, though mainly centred around his face, chest and back.

Ryoga approached the boy cautiously as he tried to get a better look at his injuries. His weakly developed danger senses went into overdrive as the boys head snapped up suddenly and he started to hiss. In the next second the boy ran towards Ryoga on all fours as though he was an animal. He jumped into the air and swiped his fist at Ryoga, as though it were a paw, creating three light parallel cuts in his chest. As Ryoga felt his skin being cut by the invisible blades he reacted on instinct and kicked the other boy in the side. This only served to enrage the boy as he sped up and started to repeatedly slash him with his invisible claws. As Ryoga was being attacked he managed to get in the occasional hit to his foe. Eventually the two boys collapsed and passed out, Ryoga from his injuries and the other boy from exhaustion.

* * *

"The next thing I remember after that is waking up in a hospital bed four days later. You attacked me ruthlessly for no reason, I almost died from the injuries I received, that's why I'm here to kill you now." Ryoga said as he summed up the events of several years ago.

"Would you believe I wasn't in control of my actions?" Ranma asked as he took up defensive stance.

"I'd consider it if I saw supporting evidence but you'll be long dead before I get a chance to see any." Ryoga said as he lunged at Ranma with a punch that missed him but connected with the tree behind him leaving a large fist shaped indent in it. Ryoga continued to assault Ranma with various attacks that he was barely able to dodge. It took Ranma a while but he came up with an attack that might actually be able to hurt Ryoga. The next time Ryoga charged at him Ranma ran towards him passing just to the side of Ryoga with his arm outstretched into Ryoga's path. Ranma's coat hanger pulled both of them off their feet until they were parallel to the ground, Ranma being slightly higher up than Ryoga as he used him arm to push Ryoga down. Spinning his body three sixty degrees in the air Ranma used his spinning momentum, gravity and his own physical strength to drive his elbow into Ryoga's chest.

The attack did manage to hurt Ryoga but not enough thatto stop him from driving his elbow in Ranma's head hard enough to temporarily daze him. Ryoga stood up and placed his foot firmly on Ranma's neck before pressing down just hard enough to cut off Ranma's air supply. "Looks like I win Ranma, if it's any consolation to you, you put up a great fight for someone so weak." Ryoga just laughed as Ranma reached up and grabbed hold of his foot in what he assumed was an attempt to pry his foot off of his neck. Ryoga looked down at Ranma's face in amusement until Ranma's lips curled up into a smile and Ryoga's world went black.

* * *

A/N: Wow, I updated way ahead of schedule. Again the next chapter should hopefully be finished within the next three weeks, if there's any delays it's probably because of uni assignments due in two weeks. If anybody's worried that I've gone and made Ryoga evil, don't be, he's not evil and he should be brought more into line with how he is in cannon in a few chapters time. Why's the manga/anime called cannon anyway, been wondering about that for a while. It's amazing people actually reviewed, I'm taking that as an indication that some people actually made it past the first paragraph, yay.

I would've answered reviews individually here but I don't think that's allowed (correct me if I'm wrong) so I'll just put a couple of general comments regarding the various reviews here. Firstly this fic will contain one of the variations of the Ranma/Akane pairing. Ranma got more or less immune to bad food while travelling China by himself. Ranko knows that Ranma can't read or write, she wasn't surprised she was amused at his word choice. Also one of the ideas I am using may cause clashes with peoples mental imageries, I'll probably announce exactly what it is in the next one or two chapters, but just make sure you pay attention to the verbs, or lack there of, for the characters, that's a nice big hint.

One last thing, yes Akane having bad defence was a preconception I had picked up from various fanfics I have read, so I went back through the manga to check out its accuracy, considering how many times Akane is taken out in the first hit, it either means she is completely outclassed by the other martial artists or has bad defence, since I don't like to think of Akane as being outclassed I'll stick with her having bad defence, if it's any consolation it probably won't be mentioned again.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Ranma ½ or any of the characters from Ranma ½. This is simply a non-profit work for amusement purposes.

**ART OF DECEPTION: Chapter 3**

Nabiki stood on the third floor balcony just outside her home room as she consulted with her lackeys' about the mornings betting odds. She was truly glad that the populace of Furinkan High were so thoroughly dense, it made it so easy to swindle their money from them. On the topic of idiots, walking her way was her favourite one, i.e. the richest one, Kuno. Waving her underlings away Nabiki queried Kuno "Shouldn't you be preparing for your morning attack?"

"Please refrain from addressing my duel of passion in so vulgar a tongue." Kuno replied with displeasure before stating his business. "I am here seeking the information on the vile sorcerer that I requested from you."

Upon hearing this Nabiki froze, she had, as of yet, been unable to learn anything of Ranma's fighting skills; as far as she knew he had neglected to do any training since he had arrived at the Tendo dojo. Ranko apparently knew next to nothing of his abilities. Genma merely spouted off about him being the best martial artist of his generation, the fact that he said nothing else on the topic prevented his claim from having much merit in her opinion. She was in a pinch, her reputation of being able to find out any and all information was at stake. She had to come up with something fast. Thankfully she had always been a fast thinker and was able to come up with a simple excuse that fit in well with the theme of the week. "I'm sorry Kuno but his black magic has prevented me from being able to gather any information on his abilities."

Kuno scratched his chin as he pondered this in silence for a moment. "Very well, I shall have to confront the sorcerer and learn of his weaknesses myself." Kuno stated as he started to cackle manically.

As Kuno started to walk away another great inspiration struck Nabiki. "Hey Kuno baby," she called. As he turned to face her she continued "don't you think I should be rewarded for my effort? I was risking my life trying to gather information for you."

Kuno took a moment to consider this before walking back to her, pulling out several thousand yen and handing it to her. "Thank you for your efforts Nabiki, I apologise for putting you in a dangerous position." As Kuno walked off Nabiki counted her money glad that the status quo had been maintained and even happier that she had been paid.

* * *

Ranko and Akane sighed as they approached the gates to Furinkan High only to be greeted by the swarm of boys armed with various sports equipment charging towards them yelling out various battle cries. After almost a week they were becoming a quite skilled team when it came to beating on the masochists, which is how they chose to see the boys now as it meant they didn't need to feel guilty about beating them a lot harder than necessary. As the horde was dispatched once more the girls were glad to notice that their numbers seemed to be slowly dwindling.

It became evident that Kuno, their main annoyance, was not among the number who had wised up and stopped attacking them as he stepped out from behind his usual tree. As Kuno walked towards them Ranma called out from his usual perch on the school fence "You'd better make this quick or we're going to be late."

"Go on ahead if you want." Akane responded as she took up a fighting stance, it was her turn to trounce the moronic kendoist today and as far as she was concerned getting bucket duty was a small price to pay for the satisfaction of severely beating Kuno.

Akane and Ranko watched in shock as Kuno strode past them without so much as a word and continued on until he was standing in front of the gate post Ranma sat on. "Vile sorcerer, I demand that you release your hold on the fierce tigress, Akane Tendo, and the feisty valkryie, Ranko Saotome, that prevents them from returning my love." He stated as he looked up at Ranma with contempt.

Ranma was rendered speechless by the incredulousness of Kuno's statement, probably a good thing since any intelligent, to him, response would have most likely earned him a severe beating from Ranko and Akane. When his patience drew thin Kuno swung his bokken at Ranma only to miss as Ranma jumped to the side leaving his bokken to cleave through the gate post like a hot knife through butter.

Akane sighed before running towards Ranma and Kuno, deciding that since she and Ranko were planning on stopping Ryoga if he tried to kill Ranma again they may as well extend it to other people trying to kill him, besides it was her turn to pound Kuno. Akane managed to move herself in between Ranma and Kuno as Ranma bounced off a tree trunk just before the tree was cut down by one of Kuno's attacks. "You're supposed to be fighting me." Akane said as she threw a punch at Kuno. The punch sailed through where Kuno's head was a second before as he had already started charging at the spot Ranma had just landed in.

Akane's battle aura flared up as Kuno simply ignored her, temporarily distracting Ranma from Kuno almost allowing the kendoist to strike a blow to his shoulder. Focusing once again he brought his attention to back to Kuno whose strikes were becoming more erratic as he continued to miss Ranma by the narrowest of margins, frustrating him to no end.

Akane moved herself between Ranma and Kuno once again and this time Kuno was forced to pay attention to her as she grabbed hold of his bokken in a vicelike grip as he pulled it back from attempting to skewer Ranma. "Beauteous Akane, why do you defend the vile sorcerer who is forcing you to betray your true feelings towards me?" Kuno asked in a pained voice.

Akane didn't bother to waste her breath on an explanation that had no chance of penetrating Kuno's incredibly thick skull, she instead replied by kicking his hands causing him to release his grip on the bokken. As Kuno's bokken fell to the ground Akane started to beat the living daylights out of Kuno, thus completing the morning ritual. As the beating continued and Kuno neared unconsciousness his mind came up with one of the best thoughts he had had in a long time, the next time he confronted Ranma he would do it when Akane and Ranko were not present, so as the vile sorcerer could not force them to intervene.

* * *

It was just past midday and, being a Saturday, school had just been let out for the weekend, for all but one. "I'll meet you guys later, I gotta go to my reading lesson." Ranma said as Ranko and Akane prepared to head back to the dojo.

"I take it this is your first lesson?" Ranko asked amusedly as she picked up her briefcase. "So how long do you think it'll take for your teacher to find out? I think, ten minutes tops."

"You know you could always just tell them, you told me." Akane said with only a faint hope that Ranma would actually even consider it.

"Yeah, but that was cause you were going to repeatedly pound me flat if I didn't." Ranma replied causing Akane to retreat into a silent embarrassment.

"Well, we'll see you back at the dojo, good luck." Ranko said as she and Akane walked away. Ranma hung around the school grounds for a few minutes before heading to the classroom where he was to meet his teacher. Ranma took a seat at one of the desks in the empty classroom as he waited for the teacher to show up.

After around five minutes of waiting the classroom door slid open and a tall, black haired, man wearing a brown suit walked in. "I'm Mr. Itou. I assume you're Ranma." The lesson started with Mr. Itou showing Ranma through the first set of five hiragana symbols with Ranma nodding along in, apparent, understanding. However from there things went rapidly downhill as Ranma was unable to point out any of the symbols he was supposed to have learnt. Mr. Itou became frustrated and pulled Ranma's face from the charts and stared him in the eyes. As he did so his frustration turned into anger and he grabbed Ranma by the ear, pulled him out of his chair and dragged him to the office.

Mr. Itou roughly pushed Ranma down into a chair before continuing through a door into the back of the office. He returned a few minutes later with the vice principal, who was looking rather upset. "Ranma, Mr. Itou claims that you are blind. Is that the case?" He asked dejectedly, already quite sure of the answer. When Ranma nodded in affirmation he sighed and continued. "Why did you lie on your enrolment form?"

"I didn't." Ranma replied, amused with the situation. "I never could read or write even before I became blind and if you want to be technical Ranko lied, she filled out my forms."

Upon hearing this, the vice principle sighed again. "You'll be transferred into one of our special needs classes at the start of next week. Please report to the office on Monday morning, someone will escort you to your new homeroom." As the vice principal walked back to his office he muttered to himself. "Why does this school have to get all of the _eccentric_ students?"

* * *

Ranko and Akane walked down one of the backstreets of Nerima on their way back to the Tendo Dojo. As they passed by one of the area's vacant lots they heard heated voices coming from the other side of the large fence bordering the lot. Scrambling up onto the top of the fence, Akane with some slight difficulty, they saw three people of indeterminate gender wearing light blue track pants and long sleeved blue track shirts, their faces were, with the exception of their eyes, completely surrounded by bandages, partially surrounding a black haired girl. The girl was wearing a black knee length skirt and a black long sleeved sailor shirt.

"You're from Furinkan High School are you not?" The girl asked in a haughty voice. In response the three people surrounding her merely pulled out a set of small clubs. "There's no need to rush on my account. If I'm not mistaken we'll be having our match in one week."

"No more talk." Said the apparent leader of the trio.

"We've got you at last." Continued another.

"We're finishing you off here and now." Added the last.

As the last person finished talking the trio charged in with a joint battle cry of "Prepare to die."

The girl dropped the bag that she had been holding and pulled out a gymnasts ribbon from somewhere within her clothes. She pulled a length of the ribbon straight with a small snap before starting to twirl the ribbon around her body. "Please forgive me if I've failed to clearly convey my message." The girl said as she sent the ribbon spiralling in the direction of the three people running at her. "Perhaps this will be clearer." She said before continuing to snap the ribbon at the three of them, each hit sounding like a whip crack.

Akane and Ranko had seen enough, they had no problems with fights but they didn't like senseless beatings, except when it came to the hentai horde and Kuno of course. They jumped down from the fence and hurriedly interposed themselves between the girl and the now cowering trio. Ranko was able to just catch a hold of the ribbon before it made another hit. "Don't you think they've had enough?" Asked Ranko.

The girl dropped her end of the ribbon, somewhat reluctantly. The girl was good to have caught her ribbon and she didn't know the skill of her friend, it would be foolish to start a fight where she would be at a clear disadvantage. "Very well, I shall leave for now. Remember, I'm called the Black Rose of St. Bacchus's School for girls." She said as she drew a single black rose from within her clothes. "Kodachi, the Black Rose. Please don't forget it." She said as she threw the black rose in the direction of Ranko and Akane before turning around and bounding over the fence with a shrill laugh.

When Kodachi had left Akane turned around to check on the three people who sat on the ground behind her. "Are you guys okay?" Akane asked, not seeing any serious injuries.

"Akane? Ranko?" One of the three asked a little nervously. When Akane and Ranko nodded in response she ripped off the bandages surrounding their head revealing that it was one of the girls from their class. The other two quickly followed suit revealing that they were also girls from their class. The three girls moved into a huddle for a few moments and when they broke they said as one. "We have a favour to ask the two of you."

* * *

Ranma walked out of the front doors of Furinkan High, a little annoyed at the fact that the school knew about his blindness already, he was hoping to pass as normal for at least a few weeks. As he walked through the grounds towards the main gate he noticed someone following along behind him in the otherwise deserted school grounds. He jumped out of the way just before the person behind him, Kuno if he was not mistaken, launched an attack.

"So vile sorcerer you continue to evade justice by using your black magic." That confirmed it, it was Kuno.

Ranma turned around and sighed "I take it you want something."

"I have come to convince you to release your control over my two loves." Kuno said as he lunged at Ranma once more. He missed, not all that surprising, but he wouldn't let it deter him and so, even less surprising, he followed up with more attacks. As Ranma continually danced around Kuno's, increasingly wild, attacks he couldn't help but wonder why Ranko and Akane felt the need to beat him up when it was so fun to simply dodge his attacks and let him get pissed off, it really was amusing.

"You have a weird way of convincing people." Ranma said before back flipping out of the way of a rather vicious horizontal sweep of Kuno's bokken. "Besides, last time I checked they hated you just fine without me controlling them."

Kuno stood still for a moment to reclaim his breathe, also giving him time to cool his temper. "Since you refuse to voluntarily release my two loves I shall break the spell you cast by taking your life." Kuno said as he closed his eyes and started to focus. When he opened his eyes he attacked once again, though this time with a far greater speed, thrusting his bokken back and forth repeatedly in an attempt to skewer Ranma, a yell of "STRIKE!" denoting every thrust.

Ranma moved backwards as he dodged all of the strikes, being pressed slightly by the attack. He was surprised at the level of skill Kuno was showing, he was actually feeling the air pressure of each strike. Ranma drew his sword from its sheath and disarmed Kuno with a single well timed swing. "Did you stop to think that killing me may remove the only chance you have of removing the spell?" Ranma asked, attempting to mess with Kuno's already screwed head.

Kuno stopped to ponder this for a moment before his mind rejected the idea, he was set on killing the vile sorcerer to win his loves and this idea went against it. "Nay, that is not the case. You are simply trying to control me but my will is too strong for such trickery to work." Kuno said proudly.

Ranma just shrugged before quickly beating the now practically defenceless Kuno. Now he understood why Ranko and Akane enjoyed beating him up so much, it was just like beating up Genma. As Kuno started to black out Ranma said to Kuno in a, obviously fake, boastful monologue. "Didn't you know that it was foolish to attack me during the day when my magic is at its strongest? You would need a small army of ninja attacking me after dark to be able to defeat me." With that said Ranma walked away unaware that Kuno had taken his words seriously.

* * *

Ranko and Akane sat on Akane's bed facing the three girls from their class who were sitting on the floor with a tray of tea and biscuit in front of them. "How did all of you get injured?" Akane asked with concern as she looked at the bandaged, and slightly bruised, faces of the girls in front of her.

"The entire rhythmic gymnastics team was ambushed by Kodachi." Said one as the girls, head now hung in shame.

"Unless we can find a replacement we'll have to forfeit the match." Added the next, looking at Ranko and Akane hopefully.

"So you want one of us to step in for you?" Ranko asked bleakly, she'd had enough experience with Genma railroading her to know that, like it or not, they were almost certainly going to end up doing what they asked.

"Please!" They all begged at once as they started bowing and scrapping. Ranko had hit the nail on the head; they were even using Genma-like technique. "There's no one else we can ask." Said the girl in the centre. "You see. This next match is rhythmic gymnastic wrestling!"

This perked Ranko's attention, it sounded like some form of obscure martial arts and that was certainly an improvement to boring rhythmic gymnastics. "What exactly is rhythmic gymnastics wrestling?" Ranko asked evenly, in her experience showing interest in these situations didn't help when and if you wanted to back out.

The three girls pulled out a poster from nowhere, it was amazing how much that seemed to happen, showing an illustration of two leotard clad girls who were in the process of beating each other up with rhythmic gymnastics equipment. Pointing at the diagram one of the girls explained. "The schools champions fight with the techniques of rhythmic gymnastics."

"I'm not sure I get it but I'm willing to give it a go. How about you Ranko?" Akane said, causing the girls to swarm around her giving them their thanks.

Great, now Akane was helping to pressure her into it. "I guess so. I can help you train if nothing else." Ranko sighed; sometimes she felt she was too nice for her own good.

* * *

Ranma sat up against one of the dojo walls as Ranko and Akane sparred against each other using rhythmic gymnastic clubs, the only tool were even moderately good at using, they hadn't even worked out how to use the ribbon yet. "How long did it take for you to get busted?" Ranko asked as she Akane broke off from their latest exchange of blows to take a small break.

"It only took around four minutes for the teacher to work it out. I thought it would've taken them longer to find out but I didn't know that it's supposed to be easy to learn how to read if you already speak the language." Ranma said as he picked up one of the balls lying next to him and started to spin it on his finger.

"Why weren't you just upfront about being blind anyway?" Akane asked, she still couldn't work out why he didn't want people to know about it. He'd gone as far as making her, and apparently Ranko, swear not to tell anyone else, Genma simply didn't tell as he didn't want to depreciate his main bargaining chip.

"Because blindness is a weakness, no martial artist willingly announces they have weaknesses." Ranma said as though it should have been obvious to anyone.

"But your blind fighting technique more than covers the weakness." Akane said, pointing out what she believed to be a flaw in Ranma's argument.

"It covers up one weakness and leaves others in its place. If people knew how I did my blind fighting technique and were skilled enough they could easily take advantage of it and leave me practically defenceless." Ranma said, his tone making it clear that he was not going to elaborate any further.

Before the following silence was allowed to get to awkward Ranko and Akane simultaneously agreed to recommence their sparring match. Ranma sat silently critiquing the girls' abilities for a while but he quickly became bored. It wasn't long before he came up with an amusing idea and a large smile grew on his face. As Akane ran in to try a different combination of attacks Ranma threw the ball straight into Ranko's clubs knocking them out of her hands and leaving Akane, who had already committed herself to the attack, to hit Ranko in the head giving him a small laugh.

As Ranko picked herself up Akane turned and glared at Ranma out of force of habit, knowing it wouldn't have any affect on him. "What did you do that for? We asked you to join us because Ranko thought you might know how to use some of these tools, not so that you could distract us."

"Is that supposed to be an insult?" Ranma asked slightly annoyed and slightly confused, why would they assume he knew how to use the tools for what was a dominantly female sport. "Besides I just showed you two a great way ta use the ball."

"We already know how to use the ball, it's fairly obvious. I was hoping you might be able to workout how to use the ribbon, I'm pretty sure you know a lot more weapon styles than I do. You seem to be a walking book of martial arts knowledge." Ranko said, she was less annoyed than Akane as she had been around Ranma longer and was used to some of his annoying behaviour.

"I'll try and work it out." Ranma said as he picked up and started swirling a ribbon lazily around in the air. "How come you're sparring with these things anyway. Cant use your hands in the fight."

Akane sighed as she watched Ranma twirl the ribbon around with ease, even though it was nothing of great skill she had ended up tying herself up the last time she had tried it. "Bare handed blows are illegal, you can only attack with the tools." She explained.

As Ranko and Akane returned to their sparring Ranma started to experiment with the ribbon to learn the best way to make it move as he wanted. When he was quite confident he had it down pat, roughly ten minutes after he started, he decided to have some fun with Akane, it was only fair to annoy them both evenly. He waited until Akane was practicing parrying with the clubs to snake the ribbon out and wrap it around the clubs in her hands and yank them out of her grip and back to himself.

"You know you could simply tell us that you worked out how to use the ribbon instead of giving us a demonstration." Akane asked as she rubbed her head, Ranma's timing was good and he had elected to let Akane take a similar blow to the one Ranko had from his interference.

"But this way's so much more fun for me." Ranma replied honestly. "When's the match anyway?" Ranma asked, wanting to know how long they had to prepare because if they fought as they were now, and their opponents were used to the tools, he doubted they'd have much chance.

"Next Saturday." Ranko replied simply, thinking along the same lines as Ranma, though she had a more positive outlook.

"Well then, I guess I'd better start showing you how to use the ribbon then." Ranma said as he stood up for the first time since he had entered the dojo almost an hour ago.

* * *

Kodachi stood outside the main gate to the Tendo compound, wearing a thick cloak over her leotard to fight of the late night chill. Kodachi had found out about the Furinkan High team organizing replacements for themselves, what sore losers, and so she was here to test the skills of her new opponents, nothing like a midnight surprise attack to do that. Kodachi discarded her cloak, it wouldn't be anything more than a hindrance from here on, revealing one of her trademark black roses in her mouth and a large wooden mallet in her hands.

Leaping over the high wall of the compound she quickly and easily made her way to the house before entering through one of the first story windows. She quickly made her way through all of the rooms of the first floor and upon failing to find either of her opponents, or more appropriately stated, victims, she continued on to the second floor. She passed the second guest room, figuring it more likely that her opponents were in one of the smaller bedrooms, and opened one of the bedroom doors. She had found what she was looking for, lying on the bed was her first opponent, Akane.

She slowly made her way towards the bed and dropped the black rose down onto Akane's sleeping form, it was polite to leave a calling card so people knew you had visited. She hefted her mallet over her head and was preparing to bring it down on Akane's shoulder, just enough damage to ensure Akane forfeited, when someone bumped into her from behind. She turned around silently to find that it was a man wearing a dark blue or black, the moonlight coming in from the window wasn't strong making it hard to tell which, ninja outfit that had bumped into her and that there were two more like him entering the room.

She did not know who they were but didn't want to risk that they were there to stop her from testing her opponents so she clocked the first one over the head, knocking him out in a single blow. Unfortunately for her the other two attacked her, calling out their battle cries as they did so, after she had knocked out their ally waking Akane up.

Akane took exception to waking up with three people brawling in the middle of her room in the middle of the night and so she instantly joined in on the fight. The two ninja were quickly knocked out of the fight by Akane and Kodachi leaving Kodachi to face off against Akane, who was royally pissed about her room being trashed. "What are you doing here? And who are those three?" Akane growled as she indicated at the limp forms of the ninja.

"I'm simply here to test your abilities. I have no idea who those three are." Kodachi replied as she prepared to attack Akane again. Akane found it disturbing that there were at least three ninja sneaking around her house while she slept, not to mention Kodachi. It was also kind of sad that she would have felt more comfortable if the ninja had cameras with them, at least then she could have chalked it up to Nabiki having pictures of her taken, not that that would have been a good thing but at least she would've known why they were there.

Akane pushed those thoughts out of her head as Kodachi attacked her with her mallet. Dodging the attack easily Akane countered with a kick aimed at Kodachi's torso, it missed by a fraction of an inch. Kodachi and Akane exchanged a few more blows, neither of them taking any serious damage, before Akane was able to disarm Kodachi by kicking the mallet out of her hands. Now that Kodachi was disarmed she was at a major disadvantage, her style specialized in the use of weapons, and Akane was able to force her towards her bedroom window.

Akane was about to land a stunning blow on Kodachi when six more ninja, this time with swords drawn, burst into the room, after hearing the commotion, distracting her from Kodachi. Kodachi was no fool, she decided to let the ninja test Akane's skills for her, she didn't have much chance against the group of ninja or Akane without a weapon. She slid open the window and climbed out the window before jumping down to the ground, leaving Akane to fend off the ninja.

Akane was able to quickly dispose of the ninja, while they were more skilled and better equipped than the hentai horde they were easier to beat, the advantages they had couldn't make up for the shear numbers of the hentai horde. With all of the ninja temporarily out of commission Akane left to search the house for any more intruders.

* * *

Kuno strode confidently along the streets of Nerima with twenty five ninja silently following him from the rooftops. The vile sorcerer would meet his end tonight, his folly the cause of his own demise, he had spoken of his weakness when he believed Kuno to have passed out. As he arrived at the Tendo compound's main gate he wasted no time in opening the gate and entering the compound. Upon entering the compound he saw a figure entering the house through one of the first floor windows. He would have to make sure his loves were safe from any danger before he faced the vile sorcerer once more.

He indicated for his group of loyal, recently hired, ninja to split up into small groups and sent a majority of them off to find the sorcerer while he, and a small group of ninja, went to check on his loves. He ran to the front door and had one of his ninja pick the lock on the door so as to gain silent entry into the house. Once in he moved slowly through the first floor searching for the intruder. On finding no trace of the intruder on the first floor he quickly headed to the second floor, where Ranko and Akane's rooms were located, he knew this as he had purchased the information from Nabiki, now believing it more likely that his loves were in danger.

He quickly made his way into the upstairs guest room with several ninja following closely behind him. Everything seemed fine but he wanted to move closer to Ranko so as to make sure. It was a mistake. As he stood their looking over her two battle cries sounded from elsewhere on the second floor waking Ranko, who had been forcibly taught to wake up at the slightest disturbance.

Standing over Ranko when she woke up was quite a dangerous place to be as it was where Genma always was when he invoked the Saotome surprise attack. So when Ranko woke, her sleep fogged mind simply registered a figure standing over her and instantly assumed it was Genma. Kuno was sent sailing across the room, through the closed window before landing in the koi pond. Shortly after Kuno touched down in the koi pond Ranko became aware that something was off, it wasn't dawn yet and there were six other people in the room with her.

As they drew out their swords Ranko amended her previous conclusion, there were six other _hostile_ people in the room with her. Deciding to work out what exactly was going on later she prepared to defend herself. She easily dodged all of their initial attacks and knocked two of them out before they were able to prepare another attack. The other four were dropped just as easily as their colleagues, the small amount of time that it took to beat them was a clear indication that fighting the hentai horde had greatly improved her ability to fight groups of people.

It took a little while for her to remember about the person she had thrown out the window on reflex, she wasn't even sure she had done it at first but when she saw the broken window it became obvious that she had. She opened the window, being careful not to cut herself on the scattered broken glass, before hopping down off the roof and finding a dripping wet Kuno, a pretty good indication that he was the one sent out the window, facing off against... Kodachi, with several ninja lying unconscious on the ground surrounding them.

"So brother dear, it was your ninja who interrupted my fun. What are you doing here anyway?" Kodachi asked as she snapped her ribbon at Kuno.

As Kuno dodged her attacks, with more effort than he would have liked. "I could ask you the same thing my twisted sister." Kuno sneered before trying to make his way past her. "Move damn you woman, I need to go help my loyal ninja for surely they are already fighting the vile sorcerer and will need my assistance."

"I could care less about your ninja or your fantasies brother dear." Kodachi said as she blocked Kuno's movements and started attacking him once again. Even though she wanted to stay and beat up the Kuno siblings, Kuno siblings that was a scary thought, Ranko ran off to find Ranma, not liking what she had heard from Kuno, the ninja were after Ranma and she didn't know how many there were, besides she could let them duke it out, come back and beat up the winner.

She quickly ran around the outside of the house looking for Ranma and was about to head in to search the inside of the house when she caught sight of Akane hunched over something just outside the dojo. Rushing over she was shocked to see Akane crouching over Ranma, whose face was contorted in pain, applying pressure to a small number of what she assumed were sword wounds on his arms and torso. When Akane noticed Ranko's presence she looked up at her with a pale face and said in shock. "He needs a doctor."

* * *

Ranma was running through various katas in the dojo, all the lights were out so as not to wake anyone else, when he noticed the presence of somebody he didn't know entering the Tendo compound. Deciding that it would be fine to leave them to their own devices, he couldn't sense any bad intentions coming from the person, he started up his workout once again. It wasn't long until he stopped his workout again, over twenty people had just entered the compound, one of which was both familiar and hostile. Kuno.

Ranma took a moment to ponder why Kuno would turn up to the Tendo dojo at midnight with over twenty other people. He smacked himself in the head when he worked it out. Considering Kuno's obviously warped view of reality he may as well have demanded that Kuno come and attack him with ninja, at least he was assuming they were ninja. He must admit though, he was surprised at how fast Kuno had organized a small army of ninja, it was less than twelve hours ago that he had beaten up the deranged kendoist.

He wasn't given much more time to berate himself or ponder how exhaustive Kuno's resources were though as the dojo door slid open and five ninja stepped inside. "Let me guess, you've been sent by Kuno to kill the _vile sorcerer_?" Ranma asked, his brow creased in irritation. Taking their quiet menacing laugh as a yes Ranma stepped into a casual stance awaiting their attack. He didn't have to wait long, the ninja drew their swords then charged straight at him. The fight had barely lasted five seconds before all the ninja were lying on the ground unconscious.

As the entire Tendo house was in the range of his blind fighting technique he was able to work out that Ranko and Akane were easily defeating the other ninja, Kuno and the person he didn't know. Ranma smiled a smile devoid of happiness as an idea came into his head. He walked over to one of the fallen ninja and picked up his sword. Running his finger along the blade he sighed, he liked the shirt he was wearing.

* * *

It had been a week since the Kuno siblings, and Kuno's ninja, had invaded the Tendo compound and that made it the day of the rhythmic gymnastics wrestling match between Furinkan High and St. Bacchus. "So which of us is going to take on Kodachi?" Akane asked, really hoping it would be her. Since Kodachi didn't actually have anything to do with the ninja, Ranko and Akane had, reluctantly, agreed that it wouldn't be right to give her the same treatment they were giving Kuno. The way the had been laying into Kuno every morning was violent enough that the hentai horde, who had taken daily beatings for weeks, had unanimously decided to disband in the interest of their safety.

So since they couldn't hurt Kodachi they both wanted the next best thing, beating her at the rhythmic gymnastics wrestling competition. Both of them were arguing that they had the more valid claim to fight her, Ranko because she was Ranma's sister and Akane because she was Ranma's friend and fiancée, that's how bad she wanted to fight Kodachi, she was actually supporting the engagement for the time being. After another five minutes of their argument going nowhere they turned to Ranma to sort it out. "Ranma, who do you think should fight Kodachi?" they asked in sickeningly sweet voices.

Ranma thought about this seriously for a moment, yes he was capable of being serious when the situation called for it, it was just that it was normally more fun to not be serious. Ranko definitely had more chance of winning against Kodachi and so for that reason he decided the best person to fight Kodachi would be... Akane, she was the one who needed the most practice. He wisely decided to keep his reasons for choosing her quiet though, no need to get pounded, his wounds were still healing, the cuts had been fairly deep, though not life threatening, and he didn't want them opened again, scratch that he simply didn't want to be pounded. "I think Akane should fight Kodachi." Ranma said shortly, earning him a hug from Akane, making him feel rather uncomfortable, he wasn't used to recieving hugs, let alone from girls.

* * *

The announcer stepped into the middle of the ring that had been set up in the centre of the St. Bacchus schools gymnasium. "In this corner, from St. Bacchus School for girls. Kodachi Kuno!" The announcer said as she pointed at where Kodachi stood in her corner dressed in a black leotard with a large picture of a rose running around the middle. "And in this corner, from Furinkan High School. Akane Tendo!" She continued, pointing at Akane who was dressed in a plain yellow leotard. After calling both contestants to the centre she had them, grudgingly, shake hands before starting the match.

Akane started the match by asking Ranko, her second, to throw her a ribbon, yes a ribbon, after a week of training she was now able to use the ribbon with a fair amount of skill and barely ever got it caught up. Kodachi had chosen to start with the rope. Akane took up the offensive first, trying to score a direct hit on Kodachi with the ribbon, however Kodachi was able easily block all of Akane's attacks and managed to make the first hit. It turned out that the rope was not rope but was in fact a rod, Akane found that out the hard way when it connected with the top of her head.

Now that she had scored a single hit with the rod she discarded it, not liking her chances of scoring another hit with it now that her opponent knew that it was a rod. Kodachi called for clubs and received them a second later. Akane followed suit, believing herself to have the advantage in a battle of clubs as it was the tool that could be best used with traditional methods of fighting. She was correct in her assumption and she was soon able to take the upper hand of the fight, giving far betting than she was taking.

Kodachi tried to use another one of her tricks to win back the advantage but it ended up working against her. She pressed a button on the handle of the clubs causing the retractable spikes to spring forth, Akane didn't bother to complain as she doubted the referee, who was from St. Bacchus, to do anything about it and as she wanted to beat Kodachi by her own skill not by default. As she went to attack Akane was able to bring up her own clubs in time to block what would've otherwise been a very painful hit. Kodachi was unable to pull her clubs back as the spikes had ended up stuck to the heads of Akane's clubs, putting the two contestants into an arm wrestle. The arm wrestle was won easily by Akane and she was able to dislodge Kodachi's clubs from her own giving her a few seconds to attack a defenceless Kodachi.

Kodachi acted the instant the hoop she had called for landed in her hands, throwing it at near point blank range from Akane. How Akane managed to dodge the attack she would probably never know but she was certainly grateful for it as she saw it cut through the top of one of the corner posts. Akane was forced to dive out of the way as Kodachi sent what she assumed was a ribbon attack in her direction, where she got the ribbon from Akane had no idea, she certainly hadn't called for it. She was given no time to ponder this though as the Razor hoop returned towards her courtesy of Kodachi's ribbon. As the hoop continued on past Kodachi Akane struck at Kodachi's hands causing her to let go of ribbon, leaving it to be carried out of the ring along with the hoop.

Kodachi was loosing the match, haven taken both more and harder hits than Akane, and was starting to get a little desperate. Again pulling tools out from apparently no-where, clubs this time, Kodachi called out, the first time she'd bothered to speak during the match. "Now witness my skill peasant. The blow of a thousand hands. AT FULL FRENZY!" Kodachi's hands started to blur and for the first time during the match she was able to drive Akane back. Akane took numerous blows as she tried to defend the seemingly large amount of clubs. Ranko took up the initiative and threw Akane a ball without her having asked. Akane jumped into the air and batted it back down and into Kodachi's hands, disarming her of the multiple clubs she had been using.

Akane called for a rope, she wanted to end the match soon, she had taken a fair beating from Kodachi's last attack, and the fastest way she could think to do it was through a ring out. Kodachi picked up two of her fallen clubs and charged at Akane. Akane made a loop in the rope and positioned it so that Kodachi's hand passed through it during her attack. When Kodachi's hand entered the loop she pulled the loop tight and used it to throw Kodachi from the ring. Akane was glad, the match should be over now, though Kodachi's manic laughter suggested it probably wasn't. Pulling a whistle from her leotard that was tied around her neck Kodachi blew into it. The result that followed was rather unexpected, instead of Kodachi landing out of the ring, the ring moved to catch her. Kodachi laughed her shrill laugh as she happily claimed. "Out is an impossibility for me."

Akane was annoyed, she wanted to end the match quickly but it didn't seem to be an option. She started to come up with a new strategy when one of the voices from the crowd reached her ears. "Just keep throwing her this way Akane." Looking out into the crowd it became that it was Ranma giving out the command. She decided to go with what Ranma said, she didn't have a new strategy yet and he seemed to know what he was talking about. Akane sighed as she set up the loop again. Kodachi simply laughed at her for using a failed tactic again and ran in and attacked her, this time scoring a few blows before she was thrown from the ring again only to have the ring catch her. This was repeated twice more, with Kodachi getting more hits in each time. Akane was close to exhaustion, if it didn't work this time she was going to lose for sure, why she was still trusting Ranma after his plan failed to change the outcome she didn't know, she just hoped she'd be rewarded for it.

Kodachi came in for another charge knowing that Akane would not be able to take many more hits before she collapsed. She was feeling rather good about herself, she was about to actually win a match through combat instead of default. As she was thrown from the ring once more she blew her whistle and watched the ring following underneath her until all of a sudden it stopped and she continued on, she was going to land out of the ring, that shouldn't have been possible. Focusing on the ring again she noticed the problem, the ring had run into the front row bleachers and was able to go no further. She closed her eyes and awaited the crash that would surely happen any second now. It never came. Opening her eyes nervously she found herself looking into the face of Ranma; he had caught her before she'd crashed into the stands.

* * *

"This is just great." Ranma said with a voice that conveyed as much sarcasm as he was possibly able. "Just what I need a psycho lunatic gymnast chasing after me."

"C'mon, it's not that bad. If it helps she's good looking." Ranko snickered, unable to keep a large grin off of her face. "You've also got stuff in common. You're both martial artists." Ranko said, her smile growing larger.

"Yeah, you make a good point Ranko, how's that kendoist working out for you?" Ranma asked evenly. "Just think if I marry her you get Kuno as a brother in law." Ranma replied, dampening Ranko's spirits and considerably brightening his in the process.

"It's your own fault for catching her." Akane said as she came out from behind one of the changing curtains in the St. Bacchus' visitor dressing rooms.

"She was coming right at me. I couldn't just sit there and do nothing as she crashed into the stands." Ranma said, pleading his case in the hopes that it would make his newest problem go away.

"I would've." Replied Ranko and Akane without missing a beat, Akane only wasting her breath, the fact that she would've let Kodachi drop obvious by the fact that she was the one who threw her in the first place. After that the conversation slowly started to become even more mundane.

It was as the trio started to leave the room that they heard something colliding with one of the external walls with an increasing intensity. At first small cracks started to form a lattice on the wall but they quickly gave way to larger, deeper, cracks before a large, roughly circular, section of the wall was completely knocked in. Standing in the newly created hole in the wall was a girl with long purple hair. The clothes that she wore, a leather breastplate over silk pants and a silk shirt, and the twin bonborri that she carried, not to mention the fact that she had just partially knocked down a wall, indicated that she was a warrior. When she spoke it became instantly obvious that she was not Japanese. Still her words "Ranko. I kill." clearly stated her business.

"What are you doing in Japan Shampoo?" asked Ranko as she dodged to the side of a bonborri that had just been thrown at her head. As Shampoo pressed her attack it became apparent that they were of roughly equal skill, Shampoo being the slightly better of the two.

Akane was about to go in and help, she had gotten used to working together with Ranko in the short time they had known each other, when Ranma grabbed her by the shoulder. "Ranko can still beat her. You only want to step in if she becomes desperate." Ranma said, projecting a large amount of authority. Akane went to move in anyway but was unable to break free of Ranma's suddenly incredibly strong grip.

Ranko continued to evade Shampoo's attacks as she tried to work out a way to lose Shampoo so that she could get away or at least make it outside where she would have more space to move. She saw her chance as she moved next to one of the changing rooms. Ripping the curtain off its rail she flung it at Shampoo and used the few seconds' distraction it gave her to hide in one of the large lockers.

Shampoo smashed her bonborri against the locker next to the one Ranko was currently hidden in before racing out of the hole she had created in the wall, believing Ranko to have run off through said hole. As Ranko made her way out from the partially damaged locker Akane rounded on Ranma. "Why didn't you let me help her?" Akane demanded of Ranma only to be waved off by Ranma telling her to ask Ranko. Akane wasted a moment trying to work out how someone who was normally nice could be such a big jerk at totally inappropriate times before turning to Ranko for answers to her questions.

"Let's head home. I'll explain on the way." Ranko said as she walked out the door, not using the hole in the wall in case Shampoo was still around.

* * *

Ranma, Ranko and Genma tiredly followed their guide, a middle aged Chinese man wearing a communist worker's uniform, into one of the villages located in the Qinghai province of China. "This, Mr. and Miss, customers, is the village of Amazons. This village women very strong" Said the guide in broken Japanese.

As they reached the centre of the village Ranko and the guide stopped to watch as two women, one of them was Shampoo and the other was an extremely large woman who looked to be almost pure muscle, fought on top of a large log that had been elevated off the ground. Shampoo ducked under one of her opponent's attacks and retaliated by uppercutting her with one of her bonborri sending her flying off of the log. Ranma and Genma had continued on, not bothering to pay much attention to the display, and now sat at a table located near the log stuffing their faces of food, Ranma assuming they could pay later and Genma planning on weaselling his way out of paying for it. These ideas were driven out of their minds as one of Shampoo's bonborri crashed down on the table just in between them.

The large crack from Shampoo's bonborri breaking the table in half caught the guide's attention and he ran over with a shocked look on his face, Ranko following behind him, shaking her head at Ranma and Genma's stupidity. "You there. Why you steal my prize? She say." The guide translated, though judging from Shampoo's yelling it was fairly obvious he was cutting out some obscene language from his translation. At Ranma and Genma's blank looks the guide translated Shampoo's explanation. "Every year, this day is martial arts show. I am now champion, this my prize."

As Ranko started to berate Ranma and Genma Shampoo turned on her. "You, why you let stupid males eat my feast? You should have more control over them." The guide translated once more. Ranko sighed, she hated cleaning up after those two, before working out, with help from the guide, that Shampoo wanted a fight with Ranko, the only female and therefore only warrior by Amazon standards, to reclaim her honour.

The fight between Ranko and the now fairly exhausted Shampoo was over quickly, Ranko easily disarming Shampoo before knocking her off of the log. As Shampoo was flying through the air the guide's face took on a look of abject horror. After Shampoo got up and dusted herself off she slowly made her way over to where the judge was holding up Ranko's hand in a show of victory with a hard look in her eyes. Shampoo grabbed hold of Ranko's jaw and kissed her on the cheek causing a shocked gasp to sound out from the crowd.

Their guide wasted no time in grabbing Ranko, Shampoo's intended victim, and Genma, the one paying his fees, by the hands and forcibly leading them out of the village leaving a confused Ranma behind, the guide only had two hands after all. The guide made his explanation on the run. "We must run customers, young Miss just getting the kiss of death."

* * *

"Kiss of death? That sounds like something out of a gangster movie." Akane interrupted Ranko's story for the second time. The first interruption being Akane's, blurted out, question about Ranko's sexual preferences, the conversation going completely over Ranma's head, after having heard that Shampoo had kissed her, before falling, almost instantly, into an embarrassed silence. Ranko simply replied that she was straight, silently wondering why Akane was so embarrassed about asking a simple question.

"It pretty much is, it's a promise to track the recipient to the ends of the earth and kill them." Ranko said gloomily as she thought of some of Shampoo's previous attacks.

"All this because you're a girl from outside her village who beat her in a fight?" Akane asked sympathetically.

"Yep, I'm surprised that she turned up here though, I haven't seen her in over a month, and I thought she must've given up too." Ranko replied sadly, now she had a third lunatic to deal with.

* * *

Ranko and Akane walked through the corridors of Furinkan high as they made their way outside to where they were going to meet Ranma for lunch. When they heard a large thumping noise and saw cracks forming on one of the walls they had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen. Shampoo burst through the wall a few seconds later and Ranko wondered why she hadn't used the door that was two metres away from her before deciding she didn't care, if Shampoo didn't want to use the element of surprise who was she to suggest it.

As Shampoo slowly advanced on her Ranko turned and started to run, hoping to make it outside before Shampoo caught her so she'd have room for movement. Akane turned around and started to follow after her with Shampoo following along soon after her. As Shampoo chased after them she threw her bonborri at Ranko's back, narrowly missing Akane, who was currently between them, and Ranko. As Akane turned one of the corners she came to a stop and waited for Shampoo to near the corner before shoving her foot out and tripping her over allowing them time to get outside, she didn't want to risk being killed by a miss aimed attack.

When Shampoo made it outside Ranko was waiting for her in a fighting stance and Akane was standing away from her, not in a fighting stance but ready to jump in if necessary. Shampoo was not going to risk leaving Akane waiting to help out Ranko but she hadn't done enough that she needed to be killed so she sprung towards Akane, catching her by surprise and moved behind her before dropping a bonborri and tapping a spot at the base of her neck causing her to drop to the ground unconscious. Now that she had removed the threat of someone interfering she picked up her bonborri, turned to face Ranko and prepared to fight her, wishing to get her task over with so that she could return to her village.

Ranko was distracted as she watched Akane fall to the ground without knowing the cause, other than Shampoo had done something to her. As Ranko was distracted Shampoo ran in, she may not have used surprise attacks but she had nothing against taking advantage of a distracted opponent. Ranko took notice of Shampoo moving in a little too late to completely dodge her opening move and ended up with one of Shampoo's bonborri slamming into her left shoulder. It didn't break her shoulder but it sure as hell hurt, she wouldn't be using her left arm if she could avoid it but that was unlikely.

Ranko continued to fend off Shampoo's attacks, only taking two light hits now that her focus was back where it should be. Ranko was able to knock Shampoo's bonborri out of her hands when they were still for a moment after they had just collided together after Shampoo had attempted to crush her head between them. As soon as she had she wished she hadn't because Shampoo drew a large sword out of nowhere, she really needed to learn how to do that trick. Any thoughts of attack slipped from Ranko's mind as she narrowly dodged Shampoo's sword attacks, due to the swords lighter weight the attacks were much faster. Deciding that now would be a good time to retreat and rethink the situation Ranko prepared to make a break for it, feeling no shame in doing so; _tactical retreats_ were a founding principal of the Saotome School.

Ranko ran off in the direction of the place that she and Akane were supposed to meet up with Ranma. Even though she no longer thought much of his fighting skills after how badly he had been hurt the night the ninja invaded she still figured he'd be more useful than anyone else in close proximity to her. As Ranko neared one of the corners of the school building Ranma stepped into her vision and turned so that he was facing her and the oncoming Shampoo. Ranko came to a stop beside Ranma and prepared to fight once more only to have Ranma take a couple of steps in front of her.

Shampoo stopped a few metres away from where Ranma now stood, next to the corner of the building, in between her and her target. "Move or I kill." She stated coldly, she hadn't hurt Akane as she had no grudge against her but Ranma had been a part of her loss of honour. When Ranma refused to move after a few seconds Shampoo became impatient and charged at him, slightly unnerved by the smile on his face. Ranma waited until Shampoo was within two metres of him before stepping to the side in a casual movement allowing the bokken that had been aimed at his neck to miss and continue on to hit the onrushing Shampoo in the forehead. The force of the blow and the fact that Shampoo had run straight into it caused her to drop to the ground unconscious.

Kuno's timing was really something; he always seemed to come along at a time that was most inconvenient for someone, at least it had worked in their favour this time. "You really should watch where you swing that thing Kuno." Ranma said as Kuno went to check out how badly Shampoo's injuries were.

"Vile sorcerer, I shall smite thee." Kuno said in rage as he turned to Ranma, forgetting about Shampoo for the moment.

"You probably should take her to the nurse's office first. It's what a noble samurai would do after all." Ranma said smugly, returning Kuno's attention back to Shampoo.

Kuno had to, grudgingly; admit that Ranma was right; he wouldn't be much of a samurai if he didn't help a maiden in trouble. "Stay here fiend, I shall be right back to deal with you." Kuno said as he picked up Shampoo and started to walk away. As Ranko dragged Ranma off to where she had left Akane Ranma just shrugged, he didn't feel like beating up Kuno today.

* * *

A/N: Another chapter finished, yay. I did it, I've gone and made Ranma blind, that's what I was hinting at in the last chapters A/N. Ranma never saw, looked, watched etc, also explains him not being able to read but speaking better, it was also the secret he told Akane and it even relates to his ability to stomach Akane's food, that'll be explained later. Probably kind of disappointing, especially the way it was brought out, but that couldn't be helped it would've been worse the longer I held it off and realistically he'd be found out pretty fast during a reading lesson, not to mention he's living with Nabiki, she hasn't spent much time with him but she'll work it out soon, and Kasumi, I figure she'd keep quiet about it, don't know why I just do. I now know why the handful of other people who have done a Ranma is blind fic always had him upfront about it but I just couldn't see him openly admit it to everyone he met. I would've mentioned it in the summary but figured it wasn't necessary as it's not a major part of the story, it's mainly to help alter people's perception of him, mainly Ranko and Akane's perception, they're rather protective.

As to Ryoga's OOC behaviour in the previous chapter here are some dodgy explanations as to the why of it. Ryoga fighting girls could easily have changed since he was trying to track down Ranma, Ranma's path changed therefore so did his, he could've easily met a female dojo master. When he went to kill Ranma originally he got over excited at the chance to end his quest for vengeance, he'd been trying to find him for years. The second time he went to kill Ranma, he didn't want to waste the opportunity because it could've been years before he found him again. And the third time, he was pumped of adrenaline from the fight. Though probably a better reason for all three attempts on Ranma's life would be author induced temporary insanity. I just needed a reason for Akane and Ranko to step in on the fight.

If anyone wants me to reply to their reviews please put "please respond" or something in the review because otherwise I just take questions as rhetorical ones. Also anyone who was interested about me enough to look at my author's page I updated it, figured I should now that I'm actually writing something.

Again, the next chapter should be out within the next three weeks.


	4. Chapter 4

Hikaru Gosunkugi, a scrawny brown haired boy with large bags under his eyes, was currently dressed in his Furinkan High sports uniform. Needless to say, he was in gym class. Not that that meant he was actually partaking in any physical activities. He had instead opted to spend his time spying on the girls' gym class through one of the lower windows of the schools gymnasium. As he watched them he was paying attention to one girl in particular, Akane Tendo. He had even brought a camera with him to take pictures of any memorable moments, and judging by how often the shutter was going off he thought there were quite a few.

As he spent his time worshipping his goddess from afar he couldn't help himself from brooding over Ranma Saotome. If only he hadn't come along he may have stood a chance, however slight, with Akane, but now, alas, she was engaged. 'That fool Saotome.' He thought, repeating it over and over in his head as mantra while he tried to think of words to better describe his hatred of Ranma to himself. Why he was trying to think of words so that he could convey his feelings to himself he did not know. The fact that he was going to talk to himself, the first sign of madness, probably wouldn't have bothered him even if he had noticed, in Nerima people waited until way past the second sign of madness, having yourself answer back, before they started to consider you crazy, the Kuno's were a good example.

He was so caught up in his thoughts that he failed to notice when three of his fellow classmates walked over to him until they started talking to him. "Hey Gosunkugi. Taking pics of Akane again?" Queried the first, already knowing the answer, it was far from the first time he had done it.

"Make me copies of all of them." The second enthused happily as the three crowded around Gosunkugi.

"Me too." Added the third, the casual way in which he had requested the copies suggesting that it was a rather common practice for him.

As the three of them huddled closer to Gosunkugi and started to badger him so as to ensure they got what they wanted Ranma moved over to find out what was so interesting. Gym may have been his favourite subject but that didn't stop him from getting easily bored without any decent competition or challenging exercises, he would've regretted convincing the staff that he was able to participate in gym class if the alternative wasn't even worse. "Hey what's up?" Ranma asked, directing his question mainly at... Hiroshi, yeah that sounded about right, who he had started to get along fairly well with.

The three boys shuffled their feet nervously, not wanting to tell him they were trying to get pictures of his fiancée. Even though they were among the few who knew that he was blind, they had paid Nabiki an excessive amount to confirm the rumours, they were still fairly sure he could kick their collective asses on a whim, the sword was also rather intimidating. They were sparred the effort of coming up with a decent lie when Gosunkugi yanked a hair off of Ranma's head before running away as fast as his legs would carry him. "Who was that?" Ranma asked, rather confused at what had just transpired.

Gosunkugi continued to run until he was on the opposite side of the school grounds to Ranma before he allowed himself to stop and catch his breath. With air back in his lungs he wasted no time in strapping some candles to his head with a strip of white cloth before pulling a straw voodoo doll from his clothes and tucking Ranma's hair into its chest. "That damn Saotome." He said as he took out a large nail and a small wooden mallet, it had taken a while but he had started talking to himself. As he was about to drive the nail into the voodoo doll someone's voice interrupted him causing him to miss the nail and hit his thumb instead.

He quickly looked around to check who had spoken to him and became worried when it turned out to be Kuno, upperclassmen usually didn't disturb him unless they wanted to beat him up. "What do you want?" he asked nervously.

"You have some knowledge of magic do you not?" Kuno asked, declining to answer Gosunkugi's question. Upon seeing the peasant in front of him using some kind of enchantment he held hope that he would be able to help him discover the vile sorcerer's weakness but now that he was practically cowering at his feet in fear his hopes were lessened, still he likely knew more than most others when it came to various magic.

Gosunkugi merely nodded meekly in response. "Good. You shall assist me in defeating the vile sorcerer that is Ranma Saotome." Kuno stated proudly as he struck a flashy pose, not even considering that Gosunkugi would be unwilling to help him. For once though his view of reality actually aligned with the real world. At the mere mention of defeating Ranma Kuno had ensured Gosunkugi's help, regardless of what Kuno would ask of him.

"What do you want me to do?" Asked Gosunkugi, his voice had slightly more confidence to it now. He wasn't sure he would be able to do what he was asked but he would certainly try if it meant there was a chance of separating Ranma and Akane.

* * *

Gosunkugi lay in wait for Ranma to come around the corner of the school hallway that he was currently in. In his hands he carried a large cardboard box that was full of various creatures that many people were phobic of, mainly various types of bugs and reptiles. His plan was simple; throw the contents of the box onto Ranma as he passed by on his way outside after school to see if he was scared of any of them. This was the second of his plans, the first was trying to work out any weaknesses Ranma may have had by secretly photographing him and analysing the pictures. It was a complete failure but it had at least allowed him to learn Ranma's daily schedule which had been useful in planning this attempt. 

As Ranma rounded the corner Gosunkugi threw the box, and its contents, at Ranma. As Ranma brushed the various animals off himself he growled, which was more than enough to send Gosunkugi running scared. Ranma needed to find a way to deter Kuno and Gosunkugi from looking for his weakness, until now it had been a mere annoyance but the only _weakness_ of his they could find by following this path was not one that was safe to be toyed with.

Ranma headed out of the school building by himself, Ranko and Akane were on cleanup duty today, on his way home. He smiled at that thought, he already thought of the Tendo dojo as home even though he'd only been there a little over three weeks. It wasn't that surprising though, the longest they had stayed anywhere while travelling was little over a month, just enough time to learn the techniques Genma had wanted him to, or wanted Ranko to as the case had been more recently.

He pushed such trivial thoughts away for the time being and returned to thinking of how to deal with his current problem, Kuno and Gosunkugi trying to work out his weaknesses. His train of thought on this topic was short lived. It died the second he heard the sound, the one sound that held the ability to stop him, frozen, in his tracks. After the sound had continued on for what seemed like an eternity to him, he managed to bring his hands up to cover his ears, attempting block out the sound. It failed to completely block out the sound and he soon found himself balled up on the ground shaking as his mind struggled to fight off the memories the sound was resurfacing.

It was roughly three minutes later that the noise finally stopped. The demon that made the sound had been chased off by the sound of the rushing feet of people coming to check on him. With the creature gone he was able to block out the memories and slowly gain control of himself once more. As his breathing started to return to normal he took notice of the people around him. 'Damn, Ranko and Akane would be the ones to see this wouldn't they.' He cursed silently to himself.

* * *

"What do you want oyaji?" Ranma asked warily as he entered the dojo where Genma stood in the centre of the large room dressed in his gi waiting for Ranma. 

"It seems that as I have been training Ranko you have let your own training slip so far as to be reduced to a snivelling coward. So I am going to train that weakness out of you." Genma stated before leaping at Ranma in a flying sidekick.

Ranma waited until Genma's foot was only a foot away from breaking his nose before he made even the slightest of movements. He didn't even to bother to move his feet from the ground as he leant to the side to dodge the attack before grabbing hold of his father's leg and throwing Genma, effortlessly, face first into the hardwood floor of the dojo. "I take it you've been talking to Ranko or Akane." Ranma said sardonically. As Genma was unable to retort, due to his mouth eating the floor, Ranma took a moment to enjoy the silence before asking "Now, what could make me act like that oyaji?"

Genma righted himself and sat down on the floor before he started to scratch his chin in thought. "Well I guess it could be..." Genma started, leaving Ranma to ponder whether Genma liked playing dumb or was just thoroughly stupid, it was hard to tell sometimes, "...cats?"

The simple mention of the word sent a large shiver down Ranma's spine before he nodded in response. Ranma walked over to Genma and pulled him to his feet by the collar of his gi so that they were faces were level and only inches apart forcing Genma to stare into his vacant eyes. "Do you remember what happened when you tried to get rid of that fear five years ago?" Ranma asked venomously.

As Genma started nodding hastily and Ranma let go of his gi leaving him to fall to the floor with a large thump. "I hope you've reconsidered any training you had planned cause if you try something, well you'd better hope you can stay awake a _long_ time cause I won't be above killing you in your sleep." Ranma said in a cold, honest, voice before walking out of the dojo. Genma may not have been the brightest person but when it came to self preservation he was the expert and so he wisely decided to continue giving Ranko his undivided attention when it came to training.

* * *

"Ranma, can you please help us find Hanachiyo?" asked Kasumi as she and Nabiki scoured the dojo grounds. 

"Hanachiyo?" Ranma asked, wanting to know what he was being asked to look for.

"She's my friends pet..." Kasumi started only to have Ranma cut her off.

"Never mind I think I've found her." Ranma said when he noticed two ki signatures coming from one of the bushes. He couldn't tell what type of animal Hanachiyo was because it was surrounded by the bushes ki, clouding his perception. It didn't matter he'd find out what type of animal it was soon enough. When he was a few metres from the bush Hanachiyo leapt out of it of her own accord making it easy enough for Ranma to tell it was a cat. Ranma froze for a moment before he started to shake.

Kasumi could tell something was wrong immediately, not that it was all that hard to work out. She quickly walked over and picked up Hanachiyo, which she correctly assumed was the cause of Ranma's odd behaviour, before giving her to Nabiki who stood roughly ten metres away. She was glad to see Ranma start to calm down now that Hanachiyo was away from him. "Are you okay Ranma?" Kasumi asked nervously.

"Y-yeah, I just need to get away from that thing." Ranma said with a small stutter before he headed into the house, still slightly shaking.

"Are you still shaking from earlier? What set you off anyway?" Ranko asked as Ranko sat down in the family room where she and Akane were presently watching TV.

"It seems Ranma here's an ailurophobe." Nabiki stated happily as she entered the family room slightly after Ranma, she had been, and still was, annoyed at Ranma when she had found out that he was blind and had managed to keep it from her for over two weeks.

"You're scared of cats?" Akane asked sceptically, how anyone could be scared of something so cute and cuddly was beyond her.

"MY FUTURE SON-IN-LAW IS SCARED OF CATS!" Soun wailed as he entered the room letting everyone within a two block radius to hear the news. Soun then went on to become a small fountain. As Ranko and Akane questioned him on his fear, Soun continued wailing and Nabiki started a running commentary on the situation Ranma's eyebrows started twitching in irritation.

Ranma was eventually saved from the rather annoying situation by an unlikely source... Genma, not that he had done it intentionally. "Alas it's true. Ranma has been scared of cats ever since I..." Genma started only to stop when he realized that what he was about to say would be self-incriminating.

The damage had already done. "You may as well tell us what you did pop. It's not like we'll think less of you for knowing how you got Ranma scared of cats." Ranko said.

"Okay." Genma sighed a little reluctantly. Kasumi entered the room, she had just put Hanachiyo away in her cage, just as Ranma walked out of the room, not wishing to hear what was about to be said.

"It was during the first year of our training voyage when Ranma was just five years old. I wished to train him in a powerful technique called the cat fist." Genma said as he recalled the events from so long ago. "You simply take fish sausages, tie them around the trainee and throw them into a pit full of starving cats."

Upon hearing this the faces' of the sane people in the room, the girls, took on looks of horror. Ranko had been wrong; their opinion of Genma had lessened.

"How rigorous." Soun said he wasn't horrified; he was simply awed at the training Ranma had undergone.

Genma nodded sagely and withdrew a book from inside of his gi. "This is the manual that led me to do it. But it contained a terrible trick." He said as he opened up the manual to the page that contained the start of the relevant section before handing the manual to Soun.

Soun quickly read through the page that Genma had indicated, it detailed the training in a similar manner to that which Genma had. "So Saotome, what's the trick?" Soun asked. Genma indicated for Soun to turn the page so he did so. Soun read through the page, with the girls reading over his shoulder, interested to learn the trick. The gist of the page was that only an idiot would use such a training method, the girls weren't surprised; they agreed with the book, Genma was an idiot.

* * *

Nabiki looked up from her desk as Kuno walked over to her during the ten minute break between second and third period. "What can I do for you today Kuno-baby?" Nabiki asked, happily anticipating the money she was about to receive. 

"I wish for you to find out the laws of the Chinese Amazons, particularly the ones which relate to marriage." Kuno said tiredly, he had tried for days to convince Shampoo that while he understood her love for his glorious self he could not be her husband as his heart belonged to two others already, even he had his limits.

"Care to tell me why you want this information?" Nabiki asked at the odd, even for Kuno, request.

"It seems an Amazonian maiden has fallen for my manly charms and wishes me to marry her." Kuno said sadly, he hated to break a poor maiden's heart but it needed to be done.

"And this has what to do with their laws?" Nabiki asked knowing that couldn't be the full story, no girl she had ever met considered Kuno charming.

"I defeated her in glorious combat and by her laws that makes us wed." Kuno replied, describing their _fight_ through his rose coloured glasses.

Nabiki decided that it was best to simply let the topic slide and move on to any other business Kuno had. "I'm sure that information can be found. Now, is that all for today?"

"Nay Nabiki that is not all. Regretfully, I have to ask you to put yourself in danger once more. It seems that my loves were not happy with my use of ninja in my fight against the vile sorcerer and so I need to know of a weakness that I may exploit by myself." Replied Kuno.

Something wasn't right with that statement. Ah that was it, Kuno knew that Akane and Ranko were annoyed that he sicked ninja onto Ranma, sure it was a vast understatement but he usually wasn't that insightful. "What gives you the impression that they didn't like you using ninja?" Nabiki asked curiously.

"My feisty valkryie told me so herself." Kuno stated proudly as he thought of his love.

"And when did she tell you this?" Nabiki asked, as far as she knew Ranko hadn't said a word to him in over a week.

"She visited me in my personal chambers late last night. She told me that I should free them of my own strength not someone else's. And that is why I need to know of the sorcerer's weaknesses." Kuno replied happily as he thought back to their wondrous meeting.

This was worrying, it seemed Kuno had gone beyond warping reality and moved on to straight out delusions. Ranko wouldn't have gone to visit kuno late at night and even if she had it would've only been to have the satisfaction of beating him up. But still, she'd check her surveillance footage just to make sure Ranko hadn't left last night. "It just so happens that I can help you out." Nabiki said as she placed her hand out in a common gesture that gave a simple instruction, place money in my hand if you want me to talk.

Kuno wasted no time in whipping out his wallet and forking over a very large, undisclosed, amount of money. "He's afraid of cats." Nabiki said as she counted the money. She and Ranma were now even as far as she was concerned, he withheld information from her and she told a violent lunatic with the intention of killing or severely beating him his weakness. She was being quite generous.

"Thank you Nabiki you have been most helpful. Now I bid you good day." Kuno said before he walked out of the classroom cackling manically. He had to go and have Gosunkugi set up a trap so that he would be able to fight Ranma with the largest advantage he could have.

* * *

Ranma and Ranko were heading towards their lockers to pick up their shoes before they went outside for lunch. When Ranma reached into his locker and found a note, he instantly scrunched it up and threw it away, it probably wasn't important and he couldn't be bothered to ask Ranko to read it for him. Not that Ranko needed to be asked in order for her to do something. As soon as Ranma had thrown the paper over his shoulder Ranko had gone and picked it up, opened it up and read it. She was quite surprised at what she read. 'Ranma help me. Terrible villains are holding me hostage in the gym. Sincerely Ranko.' 

"Let's stop by the gym before we meet Akane okay." Ranko said. Ranma happily followed along behind her, judging by the way Ranko sounded it was likely Ranko was headed off to beat someone up and that was always made great light entertainment.

As Ranma and Ranko entered the gym Gosunkugi, who was currently wearing a school dress with his hands apparently tied up behind his back, called out from up on the stage "Oh Ranma, I'm so happy! You've come to rescue me."

Any other words he may have been about to say died in his throat as Ranko appeared in front of him and grabbed him by the collar so fast that she may have well as just teleported to him. "What do you think you're doing?" She said sharply, insulted by how he was trying to pass as her with such a bad disguise, as Ranma slowly made his way to the stage.

He nervously managed to get out "I can explain." Ranko let go of his collar, she didn't need to have hold of him to beat him up if his explanation was bad, and he slipped the loosely tied ropes over his head just as Ranma made it to the stage and stood close to Ranko. Gosunkugi's mood brightened considerably, it was time to spring his ingenious trap. "Hahaha, you've fallen into my trap Saotome." He said as he pulled a cord that was next to his head causing the trapdoor under Ranko's feet to... damn, wrong Saotome; it was supposed to be Ranma who fell to the room underneath the stage. Oh well, that's why he had a plan b. "Luckily I set up another trap." He said as he pulled a second cord, dropping a large tanuki statue on his head knocking him into the hole in the floor.

Ranma casually jumped into the room after Gosunkugi, it would be amusing listening to Gosunkugi trying to talk his way out of this one. It was a bad mistake. It seemed he should have looked before he leapt, figuratively speaking of course. Inside the room were around fifteen cats, there would have been more but Kuno had only given Gosunkugi a couple of hours notice. Gosunkugi pulled out a string of fish sausages and was going to hand it to Ranma when he noticed that the cats were already moving towards him and that he had already pulled himself into a shaking ball.

Gosunkugi was going to leave the room to inform Kuno that Ranma had fallen into the trap as he had been instructed to do but was unable as Ranko had stopped him before he could reach the exit. "You're not going anywhere, you're going to help me get the cats out of this room." Those words from Ranko drove all thoughts of getting Kuno out of his head, he would probably be beaten up by whoever he didn't help but he'd like to at least delay said beating as long as possible. They paused in their efforts to remove the cats from the room when Ranma suddenly stilled before moving around until he was on all floors.

Things had been bad when Ranma had been cowering on the floor but it became obvious that things had just become a lot worse when they started to feel an immense power radiating from Ranma, strong enough that it caused the air within a couple of centimetres of his body warp as though it were in an intense heat wave.

* * *

"Mr. Saotome, can't Ranma's fear of cats be cured?" Kasumi asked inquisitively from where she sat just behind Genma in the family Room facing towards the koi pond. She had been thinking about it since hearing of the cat fist training but had only just worked up the courage to ask Genma about it. 

"I don't believe so Kasumi, I attempted to cure his fear of cats a few years ago but it went badly and things ended up worse then they were." Genma said sadly as he recalled the incident in question.

"How did things end up worse?" Kasumi asked before biting on her bottom lip in worry as she tried to think of what could have happened. "Wait, was this the cause of his blindness?" Kasumi asked, this question was asked not because she had a suspicion that it was true but because she hoped Ranma didn't have any more problems.

"Sadly yes." Genma sighed before falling silent as he nervously tried to work out how Kasumi knew about Ranma's blindness.

Kasumi picked up on this and said calmly "Everyone knows about Ranma's blindness now. I worked it out a few days after the three of you arrived, he told Akane, Nabiki worked it out roughly a week ago and I'm fairly certain daddy knows but is in denial about it." Instantly calming Genma's fears of the engagement being called off, thereby destroying his retirement plan. "So how did you try to cure Ranma's fear?"

"Around two years after the cat fist training Ranma's fear of cats started to slowly grow worse. So around five years ago I decided to try and cure Ranma's fear. I gathered up all the friendly cats I could find in the area and put them into a pit with Ranma. Everything was going fine, Ranma even seemed to relax for a while, until something he did set them off and in the chaos that followed his eyes were cut by their claws." Genma explained.

"At least you had good intentions. Is that all there is then?" Kasumi asked, back to her cheerful self.

"Well there is one more thing." He said a little sheepishly, it was amazing how easily Kasumi was able to make him talk. "When his fear of cats reaches its peak he yowls, and at that point he becomes uncontrollable."

* * *

"Are you okay Ranma?" Ranko asked nervously as slowly edged towards him. Ranma arched his back and started to hiss as she approached. When Ranko was just outside of Ranma's reach he lashed out in her general direction with his right hand, which was currently closed and being used like a paw, leaving three parallel cuts at the hem of her dress before leaping backwards. Ranma sniffed the air a few times and apparently didn't like whatever he happened to learn from it as he jumped up, crashed through and landed on the stage floor. 

Ranma sniffed the air again before slowly making his way roughly towards the door, stumbling and almost falling over when he reached the end of the stage. Most of the people had moved out of his way as he neared them as he moved around but the few who had been too scared or foolish to move now sported various gashes from when he had lashed out at them, even though he never touched them.

Ranko leapt out of the room and into the gym just before Ranma disappeared out the gym door. As no-one she could see had any injuries needing instant medical attention Ranko ran out of the gym after Ranma. When she caught up to him she cautioned the people in his path to move out of his way as she continued to follow along behind him. When Ranma made it to the school fence he jumped up onto to it before settling down apparently happy to just bask in the midday sunlight.

Word of Ranma's strange behaviour travelled quickly through the school and in a few minutes Akane had arrived at the scene and her brain boggled at the sight. It was understandable; the sight of Ranma casually licking his arm as though he were an animal grooming himself while radiating a power strong enough that even normal people could sense it from fifty metres away would've caused anyone without a Neriman, denial is bliss, attitude to go into shock. "What's going on here?" Akane asked when her brain resumed normal functions.

"I'm not sure but I think this might be the cat fist." Ranko replied slowly as she too tried to think of a logical explanation of what was going on.

They were distracted from their thinking when Kuno ran in between them with his bokken raised over his head ready to attack; it seemed news had spread too quickly. "I have you now vile sorcerer." Kuno called alerting Ranma to his presence. As Kuno brought his sword down towards Ranma's head Ranma swung his arm in a blind sweep once again and cut Kuno's bokken in half.

* * *

Ryoga ran through the streets of Nerima. He didn't know where he was going but he knew how to get there, the exact opposite of how it usually was with him. As he ran towards his destination he pulled his umbrella off of his back, judging by the strength of the aura he was heading towards, he was using it as a homing beacon, he was probably going to need it. A cruel smile formed on his lips as he caught first sight of who was generating the aura, it seemed he'd get his revenge earlier than expected and under quite ironic circumstances, Ranma was using the technique that had caused his need for revenge. 

As Ranma put Kuno on the defensive, Kuno wasn't taking any damage, his robes got a little torn, as he was able to easily dodge Ranma's ineffectual swipes, Ryoga ran in to attack Ranma in order to give Kuno time to get away. Who was he kidding; he wasn't going to fight Ranma in order to help Kuno this was about revenge. He thrust his umbrella towards Ranma's head just missing as he moved about but the attack was close enough to get Ranma's attention.

As Ryoga now had Ranma's attention Kuno had the chance to pull out a spare bokken from his robes before running back into the fray. Kuno was able to score a direct hit to Ranma's right shoulder blade while Ranma was focused on Ryoga eliciting a sharp hiss of pain from Ranma. Ryoga took the opportunity this presented and kicked Ranma's left shoulder causing him to slump to the ground now that both his arms had been hurt. Ranma managed to roll himself out of the way of Ryoga's downward umbrella strike that would have otherwise left him impaled on the umbrella.

This attack brought Ranko and Akane back to the present, they had been happily daydreaming of seeing Kuno get cut up by Ranma's newly acquired, invisible, claws. They ran the short distance to the fight and started attacking Ryoga, who was the biggest threat. Ryoga was annoyed, he didn't like to fight girls but they were getting in the way of his objective once again. He took a few swings at them but had trouble connecting as he tried to dodge their attacks, Kuno's wild swings and Ranma's thrashing hands. Ranma had become twice as frantic since Ranko and Akane had joined the fight, apparently he couldn't tell the difference between aggression that was directed at him and that which wasn't.

As he took a hit to the side of the head from Kuno's bokken he decided that the girls could wait, he'd take out the kendoist first, he was interfering worse than Ranko and Akane were at the moment. He smashed Kuno in the stomach with the length of his umbrella sending him flying back twenty feet from the force of the impact.

* * *

Shampoo ran towards Furinkan High carrying a large platter of delicacies to give to her airen for lunch. She just entered the school grounds when she saw some unknown male attack her airen. She couldn't leave this unpunished, she may not have loved Kuno, if she wanted an idiot she could've had the one from her village, but he was still her airen. She withdrew her twin bonborri and ran into the fray with her battle cry "I kill." Her Japanese still needed work. 

As Shampoo called out her battle cry Ranko made the reasonable mistake of assuming it was directed at her so as Shampoo approached she jumped her before she was able to make it to Ryoga. As Shampoo and Ranko started exchanging blows Kuno got back up and entered the fray once more. He was having a little trouble deciding who to attack first the vile sorcerer or the fanged boy who was obviously in league with the vile sorcerer. Luckily he was spared from making a decision that could have taken him hours when he realized he didn't need to attack them individually; he was more than skilled enough to attack them both.

So as it now stood Ryoga was trying to kill Ranma, Kuno was trying to kill or maim, which ever came first, Ryoga and Ranma, Shampoo was trying to kill Ranko, Akane was trying to stop Ryoga from killing Ranma, Ranko was defending herself and Ranma was bouncing around like mad, he was after all, attacking, ineffectually, whoever he happened to be closed to at the time, what he was thinking, who knew, in fact it was hard to tell if he was even thinking.

Kuno was taken out of the fight early when Ranma, during one of his frantic leaps, head-butted him, knocking him out cold. Now that Kuno was out of the way Ryoga was able to start up a decent offensive and land a few blows on Ranma before Akane was able to make him temporarily back off. Ranko and Shampoo were in the process of fighting each other to a standstill, Shampoo's training had decreased as she searched for Ranko and Ranko and Akane's skills had been slowly increasing from the training they were doing in preparation for when Ryoga turned up next.

Ranma managed to destroy Ryoga's umbrella as it passed perilously close to his head causing Ryoga to be more cautious about his attacks on Ranma as he would be fighting hand to hand and risked being cut by Ranma's ki claws. As Ryoga dodged another one of Ranma's random attacks he left himself open to take a powerful side kick to the gut from Akane sending him flying into Shampoo allowing Ranko and herself some respite.

The small breather, and the fact that Ryoga had just crashed into Shampoo, gave Ranko enough of an edge that she was able to take control of the power struggle between her and Shampoo. It took a few minutes but Ranko was able to knock Shampoo out cold effectively ceasing any more interference she may have caused in their effort to stop Ryoga.

Ranko joined in Akane's effort to stop Ryoga's attack on Ranma, she was tired but it still made the fight two on one, or if you included Ranma's sporadic attacks part of the fight two on one on one. Ranko was getting in a few attacks but they were mainly working as distractions to allow Akane to get in some solid attacks as Akane had a lot more strength left than she did. Ryoga was slowly being beaten down, he hadn't been able to get an attack on Ranma since Ranko had started helping Akane again and so he had decided to focus his attack on Ranko and Akane to get them out of the way so he'd have an unhindered attack on Ranma.

Unfortunately just because he had stopped attacking Ranma didn't mean that Ranma had stopped attacking him and he was painfully reminded of this as he felt Ranma claw at his currently open back. He grunted in pain and kicked his foot backwards knocking Ranma away from him temporarily before swinging his elbow at Ranko were she approached from his side. Akane ran forwards and threw a punch aimed in between his eyes, under normal conditions we would have easily dodged or blocked it leisurely but these weren't normal circumstances, the punch connected easily as Ryoga's attention was taken away from Akane when Ranma had bitten his leg.

The punch didn't quite knock him out but it pushed him backwards causing him to trip over Ranma, who still had his leg in his mouth, and smack the back of his head into the hard ground and that did knock him out. As Ranko and Akane calmed down Ranma stopped his erratic movements seemingly satisfied he was no longer in danger. 'At least someone seems happy.' Ranko thought as she looked at herself and the others, they were all covered in some number of cuts from Ranma's claws.

* * *

Genma had sensed Ranma's aura spike and so had a fair idea that something was wrong, he would have raced off to help out immediately, but he was in the middle of a game of shogi. Sure he was loosing at the moment but with a little artful cheating he would be able to turn this game around and beat Soun yet. 

When the game had ended, it didn't really matter who had won, or so he told himself, he excused himself and headed off towards the school. He arrived roughly ten minutes after Ryoga had been knocked out. "Ranko, Akane, come over here." He called out from what he considered to be a safe distance from Ranma.

Ranko and Akane's tempers went off when the saw Genma and started moving over to him, they wanted answers and knew that they would probably have to beat them out of Genma. "What's going on pop?" Ranko asked as she cracked her knuckles.

"Ranma's currently using the cat fist and he won't stop until he falls asleep." Genma explained, making sure to follow Ranma's movements carefully in case they needed to move out of his way.

"He won't stop until he falls asleep? Is the cat fist a technique or a state of psychosis?" Akane asked, truly feeling like pounding Genma right there and then but that could wait, they needed answers more than anything now.

"Heh heh, I'm fairly certain it's both." Genma admitted abashedly. "I think it's a technique that Ranma can only access under a state of psychosis."

"So he's not in control of his actions when he's like that?" Ryoga asked sternly causing the others to jump from his unexpected question.

"To the best of my knowledge." Genma replied, considering who he was this was probably not the best choice of words Genma could have used but the answer seemed to satisfy Ryoga.

Ryoga picked up his backpack and prepared to walk out the gate. "Uh, since you're leaving without another fight does that mean you've given up on killing Ranma?" Ranko asked hopefully.

"Maybe, at any rate there are some things I need to think about." He said before he walked out the school gate. He was honestly glad to know that Ranma hadn't been in control of himself when he had attacked him all those years ago. He had sworn on his honour that he would get revenge for the misdeed that had been done to him but since Ranma hadn't been in control of himself he couldn't be held accountable and so he had nothing to get revenge for, he wouldn't need to stain his hands in order to retain his honour. Not that all that meant he wouldn't be trying to beat Ranma up, during their fight he had used some strange technique and he wanted to learn it and whatever other tricks Ranma may have known. That was the reason he hadn't admitted that he wasn't going to try and kill Ranma anymore, he needed Ranma to think that his life was on the line if he wanted to force Ranma to bring out more techniques.

* * *

Ranma walked out of the Tendo dojo and down the street. He had decided it would be a good idea to stretch his legs when Akane and Ranko had started pestering with questions about the cat fist and the aura he had generated while under it. He hoped Genma's method of ignoring things until they went away would prove useful to him. when he felt he was far enough from the dojo that he could let loose his abilities a little he dropped his blind fighting technique in order to get the strength to jump up onto a nearby roof. 

His blind fighting technique worked by pushing his ki out from his body to force his aura into a roughly cylindrical, he could've made it spherical but that would waste effort on looking below the ground, field of very weak ki and feeling the aura's inside the field of ki. Since the aura of a living thing naturally took on the shape of its body, due to the body's ki flows, he was able to create a mental image of what they looked like. Inanimate objects didn't create their own aura like living things but they generally had small, residual, aura's that they picked up off of nearby auras allowing him to see them in the same way, though more concentration was needed for him to do so. Since over the years he had built up a large ki supply he was able to use this technique to tell what was around him for around fifty metres in all directions quite clearly and up to seventy-five if he was willing to sacrifice some details. Since ki flared up in the body part you were about to move it even gave him warning when someone was about to attack him and told him which part of their body they were going to use to do so. The problem with this was that it was a ki manipulation technique and that meant that while using it he wasn't able to boost his natural abilities with his ki or use any special techniques since he was only able to perform one ki manipulation at a time. Because of this as he started to run along the roof tops he had to systematically drop his blind fighting technique in order to jump the gaps between roofs.

As he brought his blind fighting technique up during one particularly long jump he sensed someone approaching him from behind. Flipping his body around in mid-air he landed on the roof lightly skidding backwards slightly before coming to a halt facing the approaching person in a casual stance. He was quite surprised by the size of the woman who was now balancing on some kind of staff in front of him, she was roughly three feet tall; half the height of the staff she was balanced on. She was a wrinkled old woman with gray hair longer than her body who was wearing green robes with a red Chinese symbol on each sleeve. "What do you want?" Ranma asked gruffly, ready to react instantly if any hostile actions were made.

"Don't you wish to know who I am first?" The old lady asked seemingly amused at Ranma's attitude. When Ranma failed to answer her question she sighed and shook her head. "I'm simply here to talk. My name is Cologne by the way."

"You're from the Amazon village aren't you? What are you doing here?" Ranma asked evenly.

"Yes I am one of the village elders and I have come after my great granddaughter to see what was taking her so long on her quest." Cologne said, trying to gauge the strength of Ranma's feelings on the matter of Shampoo's quest.

"So you're here to help Shampoo kill Ranko?" Ranma asked as he moved into an openly aggressive stance giving Cologne the information she wanted.

"It is her mission and she has to complete it without any assistance from me or the other members of the village. I sensed your aura yesterday and I was quite impressed by it. You even know the cat fist. It is quite obvious that you posses enough strength that you could end Shampoo's life in order to stop her from trying to kill your sister and yet you haven't done so. Why?" Cologne asked, getting to one of her main reasons for talking to Ranma in the first place.

"Having someone trying to kill you isn't necessarily a bad thing, it only becomes a problem if they succeed." Ranma stated factually.

Cologne couldn't help but cackle at this; you learned to appreciate a good sense of humour when you got to her age. "Every curse has its blessings." She nodded sagely after she stopped laughing.

"Hardly," Ranma said a little harsher than he had intended before collecting himself and continuing "some curses merely have their uses."

"So you are happy to leave Shampoo trying to kill your sister for now, but what would happen if she were too succeed? Would you seek to harm our people?" Cologne asked seriously, it always paid to know where you stood with people.

Ranma thought about the question seriously for a minute. "Only if they try to get in between me and Shampoo." He said honestly, he hoped it wouldn't get to that stage but if it did he wouldn't be able to leave a family members death unanswered.

Cologne simply nodded in understanding before spinning around and hoping away into the distance. She would have Shampoo temporarily give up her attempt to kill Ranko until she was able to determine how strong Ranma was. If she found out that he could be a useful ally to her tribe she would have the kiss of death revoked and if not she would let Shampoo resume her quest.

* * *

"Can't you swim?" Akane asked as she sat down on one of the towels next to where Ranma sat. It had been a particularly hot week and so the Tendos and Saotomes had headed down to the beach for the day. They couldn't have chosen a much better day to go either; it was a nice sunny day with an almost clear blue sky and a gentle breeze blowing cold air in from over the clear blue ocean. 

"I can swim just fine when I want to, oyaji made us swim to China. How come you aren't swimming?" Ranma asked back, everyone else had already entered the water.

Akane pointedly decided not to answer Ranma's question and instead asked one of her own. "Why did he make you swim to China?"

"He said it was good endurance training but he was just too cheap to pay to catch a boat over." Ranma said with a sigh.

"But it was good endurance training wasn't it?" Akane asked, sure it sounded a little over the top but it sounded fairly legitimate to her.

"Not good enough for him to want to do it twice, he was quite happy to catch a boat instead of swimming on the way back when Ranko told him she'd pay the fare." Ranma said seriously. It was hard to believe just how cheap Genma could be at times, Ranma wouldn't have been surprised if some of the times they had stolen food to eat was simply because Genma had been too cheap to pay for it.

After that line of conversation had ended awkwardly Akane looked around for something else to talk about. "Hey, what's going on over there?" Akane asked as she pointed to a place around a hundred metres away where a crowd was starting to form. When Ranma merely tilted his head in her directions and raised his eyebrows she slapped herself in the head, that had been a stupid question to ask a blind person. "Let's go and find out what's going on." Akane said as she got to her feet.

Ranma simply shrugged, got up and followed, it wasn't like there was anything better to do at the moment. As they neared the crowd Akane saw a large banner suspended between two poles and read it aloud, for Ranma's benefit, "Martial Art Melon Splitting."

Soon afterwards a voice rang out from the sound system that had been set up on a small podium nearby. "It's an art. It's a race. It's a war." The announcer took the crowds' murmur of 'What's martial art melon splitting?' as his cue to continue. "The rules are simple, contestants run while trying to split each other's watermelons. The first to reach the finish line with their melon intact wins."

At hearing this the crowd slowly started to dissipate with words along the lines of "What a stupid idea." and "How lame?"

"And the prize is twenty thousand yen!" the announcer continued. The crowd instantly regathered around the podium so that they could enter themselves into the competition.

"Aren't you going to sign up? You're skilled enough that you'll win this easy." Ranma asked, this type of thing seemed to be right up her alley.

"You really think so?" Akane asked with slightly flushed cheeks, she'd noticed in the last few days that Ranma's opinions of her were starting to become more important to her.

"Yeah, the only people on this beach who would stand a chance against you are Ranko, who isn't here, and Nabiki, who also isn't here." Ranma responded, failing to notice anything out of the ordinary.

"Nabiki?" Akane asked incredulously.

"You'd be standing between her and twenty thousand yen." Ranma pointed out.

Akane sighed as she walked over to sign up for the race, it was true, Nabiki would have probably found a way to beat her even if the prize had only a thousand yen. Akane collected her watermelon and bokken and went over to wait at the starting line.

"On your marks. Get set. GO!" The announcer called as he fired the starting gun. The hundred or so contestants started off in a run towards the finish line, the first five contestants being knocked out of the competition in a matter of seconds. Akane was finding this so easy that it was almost boring, sure there were a lot of people but they were all fighting amongst each other and she was used to people trying to dog-pile her in a fight. As the number of contestants had fallen to ten by the time they reached the halfway point Akane decided that she may as well smash the other's watermelons before she finished, she wanted to feel as though she had at least partially earned her prize. She quickly finished off the others before jogging her way to the finish line before heading back to the announcer's podium to collect her prize.

"You know you could've acted like the others had a chance." Ranma said seriously as Akane walked back to where he stood.

Akane looked down at the ground slightly abashed for a short time before she noticed the smile that was creeping onto his face. "Want to get something to eat? It's on me." Akane asked cheerfully already knowing the answer.

* * *

A/N: I think this chapter only took me a week and a half to get out, yay. I just want to make it known now that Ranma's power increase isn't because of his blindness as is done in the Ranma is blind fics that I can think of, it's to do with his fear of cats increasing and something else that was subtly, I hope, hinted at last chapter. The reason the cat fist was different, I hope you could tell it was different, is not because the technique is different but a reflection on the changes in Ranma. 

I probably should have had Ranma cut himself up, I'm pretty sure everyone caught onto that I think it was fairly obvious, at the end of the last chapter for better effect but that would've made the chapter to short for my tastes. I was going to put this warning, no it's not a bad thing, in the last chapter's A/N but I was sleepy and forgot: If something hasn't been stated in the narrative or the A/N don't take it for granted. I am of course talking about the curses or lack there of, If I can manage, though it's probably unlikely, I'd like to keep people guessing about that for a while.

I'll be coming up with original plots in here somewhere it's just a matter of time until my mind comes up with them, though they are guaranteed as I will need them because of the way I want the central story to go. Ranma will be pawning his problems off on to others for a while but he'll have his (un)fair share of trouble by the time this is through. One of the things that will contribute to Ranma's problems will be an idea I am choosing to blame on the 3 doors down song "Let me go", though it most probably originated in my warped mind, to my knowledge it hasn't been done before.

Hope I alleviated your boredom slightly and/or satisfied your interest in the story. Unfortunately I have three more uni assignments to do so the next chapter will probably take longer than usual, though I'm sure it will be out in less than four weeks.


	5. Chapter 5

Shampoo, who was currently dressed in a flower print cheongsam that was, arguably, just long enough to be decent, rode through the streets of Nerima with a delivery box containing a large order of Ramen tied to the back of her delivery bike as she headed towards her destination… via Furinkan High, which was in the wrong direction. Her customers could wait; she was going to see her airen so that she could try to talk him into returning to the village with her. If she wasn't able to convince him soon she would have to start trying other methods of persuasion, possibly even mind altering drugs. Permanent ones. Though that was a last resort. Unfortunately. His personality was really annoying.

She rode through the school gates and rode around to the soccer field where Kuno sat on a bench watching the other students in his class playing a game of soccer. Kuno didn't much feel much like competing with the 'peasants' at the moment, which was lucky as the reason he was on the bench was for verbally abusing the referee after being called offside. Shampoo brought her bike to a stop and pulled down the stand before walking up behind Kuno and glomping onto him from behind.

Kuno jumped in shock as he felt Shampoo start to press her body up against his back. "Akane? Ranko?" He asked hopefully, perhaps today was the day that one of his dreams would come true and Akane, Ranko or better yet both, would declare their undying love for him.

Shampoo was annoyed by that, it was bad enough that her airen loved other women without him loving the person who had humiliated her in front of her entire village. "Wo ai ni." Shampoo managed to reply playfully after successfully suppressing a growl.

Kuno sighed when he finally associated the words with Shampoo; obviously his loves had not yet broken free of the vile sorcerer's spell or else they would have been in Shampoo's place. "Please remove yourself from my person for even though it pains your heart I am unable to return your love." Kuno said sympathetically after trying, and failing, to pry Shampoo from off of his back. He looked to the side as heard the sound of a shutter clicking and saw Nabiki ten feet away happily taking pictures of him and Shampoo, she thought it was priceless that Kuno was getting a taste of his own medicine.

"Ah Nabiki, just the person I wanted to see." Kuno stated as he stood up rapidly, shocking Shampoo enough that he was able to dislodge her, before walking over to Nabiki and leading her away to a spot where they were in Shampoo's sight, he didn't want her to feel the need to follow them, but out of her hearing range. "Tell me, have you found out about the Amazon marriage laws yet?" Kuno asked anxiously.

"Not yet Kuno-baby," Nabiki lied, she had the information he wanted but she was enjoying the situation enough that she was prepared to wait a few days before she gave him the information and, subsequently, got paid "but I'll have the information soon."

It was almost a shame that Kuno would be able to easily get out of this latest predicament, at least it would be easy once he got over his ego problem, but then again she would have felt sorry for Shampoo if she ended up stuck with him, she couldn't think of anyone who deserved to be stuck with Kuno. All that had to be done to prevent themselves being married would be for both of them to tell an Amazon village elder that they did not wish to be wed. That's why Kuno's ego would be a problem, she could tell, and so could most others, that neither of them wanted to be married to the other but Kuno's ego wouldn't let him see past Shampoo's acting; not that she was that good, not that she needed to be. But that was the beauty of the situation, she could sell the information to Kuno and he, believing that Shampoo loved him, would do nothing with it and she could then sell the information to Shampoo making everyone happy, especially herself. She found it a little odd that Shampoo didn't know this law though she guessed it was probably a little known one since men usually purposefully defeated an Amazon woman in order to claim a bride and Amazon women were strong and usually only lost if they threw a fight on purpose meaning that one party normally wanted the marriage to take place making the law in question useless.

"Please inform me as soon as you have the information." Kuno replied despondently as he headed slowly back towards Shampoo, she would have just followed him if he left. When he had made it back to her he was surprised to see her conversing with what, to him, seemed to be a clothed monkey, wig and all, balanced on a staff. "I didn't know you had a pet, and a talking one no less." Kuno said, perfectly displaying his idiocy.

Kuno was promptly driven into the ground courtesy of Cologne's staff forcefully colliding with the top of his head. "You should show me respect, son-in-law." Cologne said, the last part more than a little grudgingly.

"SHAMPOO." Yelled a white blur as it ran towards them before hugging Kuno. When the blur stopped moving it resolved itself into a man, with long black hair that reached down to the middle of his shoulder blades, who wore a white robe over long black pants. "Please don't tell me you've fallen for another man."

"I am not Shampoo. And I assure you I have no interest in men." Said a clearly disgruntled Kuno as the man continued to hug him.

Upon hearing this he abruptly let go of Kuno and pulled out a pair of glasses from within his robes before putting them on. Now that his vision was cleared up he clearly agreed with Kuno's statement, the first one that is, he couldn't be sure of the second, and sent him flying backwards with a yell of "Who are you?" He looked around until he found Shampoo, raised his glasses so that Shampoo would be able to look into his eyes when he hugged her and ran towards her only to have her step out of his path leaving him to run into the gathering crowd and grab Akane in a hug.

Akane didn't take this too well and quickly broke free of his grip in order to punch him in the face at the same time Kuno's bokken crashed into his head, he had recovered quickly when he had seen this newest miscreant 'attack' one of his loves. "Who are you anyway?" Akane asked hotly as the man picked himself off the ground.

"I am Mousse. I am the one who is to be Shampoo's groom!" Mousse proclaimed proudly as he cleaned his glasses on his robes before putting them on again.

"What you talking about? We only friends from child times." Asked Shampoo as she stared at him with raised eyebrows.

"Mousse! Weren't you once spurned by Shampoo?" Cologne asked tiredly, the idiot must have followed her here in order to see Shampoo.

"But... But... That was when we were only three." Mousse retorted, shocked that she was bringing that up. How he wished she would just hurry up and get senile already.

"Age makes no difference. It has been decided. This man will be Shampoo's groom!" Cologne said as she waved her arm towards Kuno before adding under her breath so that only she could hear "Unfortunately." Truth be told, from what she had learned of Kuno so far she would much rather have Shampoo marry Mousse than Kuno and that was saying something, she certainly didn't hold Mousse in high regard. She would have to brush up on the laws and try to find a way to get Shampoo out of this mess.

"Actually I already have an intended." Kuno stated, once again trying to push his version of reality on to others.

Someone actually listened to Kuno for once. "You have a fiancée... and yet you... and Shampoo... Enemy of all women!" Mousse said as he kicked Kuno in the side of the head. Kuno may not have been an enemy of all women, except in the eyes of Ranko and Akane, but that didn't mean the women present, or anyone else, liked him enough to correct Mousse. "I challenge you. Should I win..." Mousse started only to be cut off by Cologne.

"You can't have Shampoo." Cologne said simply, predicting what he had been about to say.

Mousse took a moment to consider what his terms should be now. "Then I will take your woman." Mousse said, if he couldn't have Shampoo he shouldn't be able to have his woman.

"Women." Kuno corrected simply.

"Women?" Mousse questioned incredulously.

"As in the plural of woman." Kuno explained, it was his duty as a nobleman to enlighten the simple people.

As Kuno and Mousse moved on to organizing a time and venue for their duel Shampoo shook her head at their stupidity. She had learned something today, two idiots were better than one. They kept each other occupied.

* * *

It was late at night when Kodachi left the Kuno estate heading towards the Tendo Dojo with a large bouquet of black roses in her arms. It had been too long since she had been able to spend some time with her Ranma-sama, in fact she hadn't been able to spend any time with Ranma since they had first met. He kept running away from her. That was why she had brought the flowers with her tonight, hopefully bringing him flowers would endear herself to him, and if it didn't there was always the paralysis gas she had hidden inside the bouquet. 

As she was running along the rooftops it didn't take long before the Tendo Dojo came into her view. She had waited until this time of night so as to assure all of the Dojo's residents were asleep leaving her free to wake Ranma up and take him somewhere more private without any disruptions. As she jumped onto the boundary wall of the Tendo compound she saw a figure lying on the roof of the house. 'Ranma-sama must have known I was coming and stayed up for me.' Kodachi thought happily to herself as she bounded over to the roof. She was half right. It was Ranma but he certainly wasn't waiting for her, if he had known she was coming he would've made sure he was nowhere to be found.

At her sudden approach Ranma foolishly tried to get away. Actually the plan was a good one but the execution was poor, he tried to bolt instead of trying to slowly slink away. As soon as Kodachi noticed his rapid, frantic, movements, which was almost instantly, she threw the bouquet at him. Ranma caught the bouquet out of reflex and held it in a firm grip that was just strong enough to release the pressurised paralysis gas. "What the hell?" Ranma asked, inadvertently inhaling some of the gas.

"Don't worry, it's just some paralysis gas." Kodachi answered simply as she pushed Ranma back down onto his back.

"Damn... crazy... psycho... lunatic..." Ranma managed to get out, not even getting halfway through his intended insult, before the paralysis gas swung into maximum effect making it too difficult to continue.

"Don't say such hurtful things my darling Ranma-sama. Just because I'm quite skilled when it comes to making concoctions with... unorthodox uses hardly makes me... eccentric." Kodachi said as she kneeled down and straddled Ranma's chest. "Now let us drop such trivial matters and just enjoy our time together."

Those words alone were enough to send a shiver down Ranma's spine but, as was the case with most things in Ranma's life, it got worse. Kodachi placed her hands on Ranma's shoulders and leant her face down towards his until he could feel her cool breath on his face. As Kodachi's intentions became clear Ranma futilely struggled to move his head away from her. Unfortunately for him, and luckily for the roof, the temporary paralysis prevented him from moving, otherwise his head would've broken straight through the roof in order to move his face away from Kodachi's. As Kodachi inched her lips closer to Ranma's a rare thing happened; lady luck smiled on Ranma.

Ranko's foot arced swiftly through the air before it connected with Kodachi, sending her flying a few metres away to where she landed lightly on her feet. "Such tragic timing." Kodachi said sadly before bounding away over the rooftops with a call of "I'll see you later darling."

"You owe me." Ranko said simply as she picked Ranma up and took him inside. Ranma agreed, he was definitely indebted to Ranko for that save, so much so that he'd probably even let up on the teasing for while. On the bright side he'd gained what could possibly be useful information from that horrifying experience, he now knew that should he ever want a _concoction_ with an _unorthodox_ use he could probably get it from Kodachi.

* * *

Ranko and Akane made their way across the school's soccer field over to where a yatai had been set up by the Cat Café, a new restaurant that had just been opened up. They would have gone to the vendor, who was closer, but it was Shampoo and Ranko felt nervous around her even though she had apparently given up trying to kill her. "Two orders of Ramen please." Akane said as she and Ranko pulled out their money. Cologne, the proprietor and main cook for the Cat Café, quickly made and served up their orders before taking their payment. 

Now that they had their food they walked back towards the centre of the field so that they would have a good view of the fight that was going to start soon; they were hoping to watch Kuno have his ass handed to him on a silver platter. Speaking of Kuno, he stood in the middle of the stage that had been built, on his request, and payment, to a local contractor, for his 'monumental battle', waiting for Mousse's arrival. Kuno wasn't left waiting too long before Mousse walked into his sight, well he was actually but that was because he'd stupidly showed up an hour early.

When Mousse reached the stage he wasted no time in jumping onto it and moving to the centre to face Kuno. "So you have come at last and just when I thought you might have done the wise thing and not shown up, it seems I gave you too much credit." Kuno said in a patronizing tone as he pulled a bokken out of his clothes and held it at the ready.

Mousse ignored Kuno's comment and moved into a simple fighting stance. As far as he was concerned this fight was nothing more than a formality in the process of winning over Shampoo, he probably wouldn't even break a sweat. "Whenever you're ready." Mousse said simply.

Kuno ran the short distance between the two of them and swung his bokken in a horizontal arc that would've left Mousse in two pieces had he not dodged it easily by leaping over it. Mousse delivered a simple kick to the side of Kuno's head, while still airborne, sending him sprawling to the ground a couple of metres away from the end of the stage. Kuno got to his feet quickly and held his bokken at the ready once more. It seemed he would need to try a little harder but that was no worry, after all, he had fought with vile sorcerers, the fact that he had lost was forgotten, or just considered trivial to him. Kuno charged at Mousse with more vigour and speed than his last charge and managed to score a few hits to Mousse before he was driven to the ground once more.

This got a vast majority of the crowd going, it seemed as though it was going to be a decent fight. The section of the crowd that wasn't excited by Kuno's successful attack comprised of two people, Ranko and Akane, and it should, again, be noted that they were hoping for more of a one sided bloodbath than a decent fight.

As Mousse watched Kuno pick himself up once more he decided to take it up a notch, he wanted to crush Kuno so as to impress Shampoo so it wouldn't do for Kuno to look good. "I think it's time I introduced myself to you properly. I am Mousse, a master of hidden weapons." Mousse said as he raised his right leg off the ground until his knee was up to the middle of his chest and curled his fingers up to resemble claws as he moved his arms above his head until they were at a roughly forty-five degree angle from his body. "THE BLOW OF THE CHICKEN EGG." He yelled out as he started procure a small number of eggs from seemingly nowhere.

As Mousse threw the first batch of eggs at Kuno he dove out of the way, he may have been stupid but he still knew an attack when he saw one, leaving the eggs to harmlessly explode on the now empty part of the stage. As Mousse threw the next batch of eggs his way Kuno dodged once more before quickly focusing in preparation for his own mid range attack. He was not misguided to his abilities as most people believed, he knew full well what his abilities and limits were, his problem was misjudging his opponent's level of skill. As Mousse was still gathering eggs into his hands Kuno started thrusting his bokken through the air at incredible speed sending small pressurised blasts of air towards Mousse.

Mousse was caught off guard and was struck multiple times by the attack. The attacks wouldn't have caused him all that much damage, he'd taken worse hits before, had one of them not struck his left hand where the eggs were held. The eggs exploded in Mousse's hand causing him a great deal of pain, knocked his glasses from his face and left the top half of his robes singed. This infuriated Mousse. He was supposed to be winning this fight easily in order to prove himself to Shampoo. In his rage he threw an assortment of chains with bladed weapons on the end of them hurtling out of his robes in the direction he assumed Kuno to be in.

As the chains sailed through the air they passed nowhere near Kuno but instead flew off the stage and towards Akane's back, since the fight wasn't going how she'd hoped it would she'd decided to go and get some more food. As the various blades neared her back she was roughly pulled to the side. Akane assumed it was Ranma trying, and succeeding, to annoy her and was about to yell at him when she realised two things. Firstly, there was a set of deadly weapons stuck into the ground where she would have been had she not been pulled aside. Secondly, and most importantly, the person who had pulled her out of the way wasn't Ranma; it was a redheaded girl who bore a strong resemblance to Ranko. Akane had initially confused her for Ranma because she happened to be wearing clothes very similar to what Ranma usually wore; the biggest discernable difference was that her shirt was blue instead of Ranma's usual red. "Are you okay?" The girl asked.

Her anger subsided when she realised it hadn't been Ranma trying to annoy her, leaving shock at the fact she had almost been killed to take its place. Because of this it took her a while before she was able to regather her senses and respond. "Yeah, I'm okay. Thanks for saving me."

"That's okay but you may want to pay more attention to what's going on around you. Seems like the fight's about to end." The redhead said cheerfully before walking into the crowd and disappeared from Akane's sight.

It took Akane a while to remember the redhead's words after she had vanished from her sight; this was due to the fact that while she was with the girl she had been unable to take her attention off of her and the effect had lingered for a few moments after the girl had left her sight. This made her a little uneasy because only two people had ever had a similar effect on her before, Ranma and Dr. Tofu, and one predominate feature that they had in common that separated them from other people in her life was that she was, or had been, attracted to them. Yes she could admit to herself, but not to anybody else, not even under the pain of death, that she was attracted to Ranma; her attraction to Ranma had started to crop up at some indistinct point over the last few weeks.

Casting any implications from that train of thought out of her mind for the time being she returned her attention to the fight just after Mousse had picked his glasses up from the ground and put them on his face before taking off his robe and throwing it off the stage. After nearly injuring someone in the crowd he didn't wish to use his ranged attacks again and losing the weight of the weapons hidden within his robes would give him a little more speed and agility which would be useful for unarmed combat. He moved into a defensive stance and waited for Kuno to make the next move.

Kuno quite happily obliged, his confidence had received an unneeded boost after setting off the explosive eggs while they were in Mousse's hand. Kuno charged at Mousse and started up a series of strikes when Mousse was in swinging range. Mousse dodged the attacks with relative ease and unleashed his own barrage of kicks at punches at Kuno. After a few seconds of the exchange Kuno was sent flying off the stage to crash into an unlucky group of boys in the crowd.

Mousse took a moment to relax and enjoy his victory, blocking out Kuno's accusations of trickery and black magic, before walking off the stage towards Shampoo. "I love you Shampoo." He proclaimed loudly as he wrapped his arms around her. He was promptly beaten into unconsciousness by an irate Shampoo but that didn't bother him, he was finally back with his beloved.

* * *

"So, what's this for?" Ranma asked as Dr. Tofu handed him a small fish bowl that only contained water. He was currently at Dr. Tofu's clinic. Akane and Ranko had overreacted, though only slightly, to some of his comments, he personally thought they were rather funny, and beaten him up before sending him flying. He had landed outside the clinic and the good doctor had been kind enough to patch him up. If the last few beatings Ranko and Akane had dealt him were a reflection of their ability to work together in a fight then they were quickly becoming a very formidable pair. 

Dr. Tofu didn't answer his question immediately, instead leading him out to the small yard located behind the clinic. "A patient gave me some eels and I'd like to pass one on to Mr. Tendo. Since you're here I was hoping you could take it for me." Dr. Tofu said as he reached down into the large container that held several eels, pulled one out and placed it into the fish bowl.

"Sure thing." Ranma replied happily, it was the least he could do after Dr. Tofu had helped him out.

And so it was that five minute later found Ranma walking along the fences of Nerima, fishbowl in hand, on his way back to the Dojo. The walk had been peaceful so far but few things remained constant, especially when it came to Ranma, and this was no exception. As soon as he heard the shout of "RANMA PREPARE TO DIE!" he came to an abrupt halt leaving Ryoga to pass just in front of him in a flying sidekick.

"I take it you want something." Ranma said dryly as he leapt off of the fence and onto the ground a few metres away from Ryoga.

"Yeah, I want you to fight me." Ryoga said menacingly as he pulled several bandanas off of his head and started to twirl them the fingers of each of his hands.

"What's in it for me?" Ranma asked in a bored tone. A lot of people had tried to kill him over the years and they always had some bizarre, yet oddly amusing, reason why. Because of this he always liked to find out why people wanted him dead. It was kind of his equivalent to collecting bottle caps. That was the only reason he'd fought Ryoga in the first place, he'd wanted to beat Ryoga's reason for wanting him dead out of him. Things hadn't worked out that way but he'd got what he wanted and now that he knew why Ryoga wanted him dead he had no interest in fighting him.

Ryoga was left dumbfounded by Ranma's question, that wasn't anywhere near the response he had expected. "Ah... If you can beat me you get to live." Ryoga dumbly managed to get out after a moments contemplative silence.

"Almost sounds tempting." Ranma said as he lazily flopped down into a conveniently located park bench. Ryoga growled at the way Ranma was dismissing him so easily before slowly and purposefully walking towards Ranma so as to give the pigtailed boy time to get to his feet and ready to fight. Ranma however chose to use the time he was given to move his hands behind his head, close his eyes, and slump down until he was reclining comfortably on the bench. "You know Ranko and Akane seem to really enjoy fighting you. Why don't you go find and fight them?" Ranma asked calmly when Ryoga was a meter away from him.

"No thanks. Even if they were here I wouldn't want to fight them." Ryoga said as he grabbed a hold of Ranma's shirt collar and roughly pulled him up off the bench and into the air.

"That's a shame." Ranma said just as calmly as before even as Ryoga drew back the hand that wasn't holding Ranma up in preparation to cave his skull in.

"And why's that?" Ryoga asked indifferently, deciding that he may as well humour Ranma a little before knocking his head off. He hadn't set out to kill Ranma today but the option sure as hell looked tempting right now.

"They're probably going to fight you regardless of your wants." Ranma whispered before forcefully changing his demeanour, moving his body around so that it seemed he was trying to break Ryoga's grip on his collar. Ranma's sudden change of behaviour confused Ryoga and as he tried to work out what was going on Ranko blindsided him, driving her knee into his temple. The shock of the blow caused him to release his grip on Ranma.

"You might want to get out of here." Akane said as she ran up to join Ranko. Ranma was all too happy to oblige, or at least pretend to. He quickly ran to and around the nearest corner before doubling back and taking perch in a nearby tree so that he could keep track of what was going on while remaining unseen.

"Dammit." Ryoga spat angrily after Ranma had run away and Ranko and Akane prepared to attack him. When Ryoga told Ranma that he didn't want to fight Ranko and Akane he hadn't been lying, had Ranma still been around he would've fought them to get to him but since he wasn't there he had no reason to fight them. "There's no point in us fighting, I'll be back for Ranma later." Ryoga said before turning away from Ranko and Akane and walking away. Ranko and Akane only stayed long enough to watch Ryoga walk out of their sight before heading off to look for Ranma to find out if he was okay.

After the others had left Ranma slammed his fist into the tree to partially vent his anger. He truly didn't care if Ryoga wanted to fight Ranko and Akane or not, he could be buddy-buddy with them for all he cared. All that mattered to him was that Ryoga did fight them, preferably attacking them viciously, and if Ryoga wasn't going to fight them of his own accord then he was just going to have to find a way to persuade Ryoga into doing what he wanted.

* * *

Ryoga wandered aimlessly through the streets of Nerima hoping, but not believing, that he would stumble upon either Ranma or the Tendo Dojo soon. As he turned down yet another random street his stomach started to growl, demanding it be fed soon. His hunger wasn't surprising. It was getting late, the sun had almost fully set, and he hadn't eaten a decent meal in a few days. Since his lack of directional sense had conveniently led him to an area that had several restaurants he chose one arbitrarily and walked towards it. As Ryoga entered the restaurant in question he read it's name out aloud to himself "The Cat Café." 

Upon entering the restaurant he was promptly greeted by... hmm, that was odd, there was no one standing near him. After quickly looking around he decided that it was most likely that he had been greeted by the man in the white robes who was currently trying to usher a pot-plant that was located a few metres from the entrance to a table. After walking over to him Ryoga grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around so that he was facing him. "I think you were trying to speak to me." Ryoga said a little awkwardly. Even with all the travelling he had done having the greeting staff mistake you for a pot-plant wasn't something he'd come across before.

The usher, Mousse, cleverly decided that now would be a good time to put his glasses on and was able to lead Ryoga to a table close to the kitchen, only bumping into other tables three times along the way. "Some one will be along to take your order soon." Mousse said before retreating into the kitchen.

While he was waiting to be served he took a look around the restaurant he was in, it wasn't like there was much else he could do. It was a decently sized, nicely decorated, place with various bamboo screens partitioning off what he assumed were private tables. Spread out evenly throughout the main are were around twenty tables that could seat three or four people depending on their placement. Judging by the almost completely unmarked furniture where he sat he guessed that the restaurant was either new or had been recently refurbished. The Cat Café was certainly better than a lot of the dumps he had had the misfortune of dining at, in fact by his standards it was a high end restaurant.

Any further observations were delayed as a purple haired waitress dressed in a silk shirt and matching silk pants walked up to his table with a notepad in hand. "Hello, I Shampoo, I take your order now." Shampoo said in a friendly voice, her Japanese still slightly broken but much improved from a couple of weeks ago.

"I'll just have whatever you recommend." Ryoga said without even having looked at the menu, Shampoo nodded in understanding and made her way back to the kitchen. This was his standard practice when eating out. Since returning to a particular restaurant was a rare occasion for him he allowed the staff to order for him as they knew what the place's specialty was, this generally ensured that he got a decent meal instead of ending up with some horrible slop.

Because of where he was seated his voice carried on into the kitchen to where Cologne was currently cooking up a customer's order of pork ramen. Upon hearing the voice Cologne was intrigued, she recognised the voice but was unable to place it with its owner. She hoped over to the kitchen door on her long, gnarled, staff and poked her head through the bead curtain that separated the kitchen from the dining area. As she saw spotted Ryoga a smile grew on her face. It seemed she had been spared the effort of tracking him down. A fact for which she was truly glad, she had tried to find him after he had walked away from Ranko and Akane that afternoon but she let him out of her sight and had been unable to find a trace of him afterwards.

Cologne quickly finished up making the pork ramen and served it into a bowl before giving it to Shampoo to take the customer. She quickly made Ryoga's order, shrimp ramen, and took it out to him herself hoping that she would have some time to talk to him before another wave of customers came in. "Do you mind if I talk to you for a while?" Cologne asked as she placed Ryoga's order down on the table just in front of him.

Since Cologne was the only elder member of staff Ryoga had seen he was able to make the logical connection that she was the owner of the Cat Café. Not wishing to offend the proprietor Ryoga gestured for Cologne to take a seat as he asked "What do you want to talk about?"

After quickly introducing herself and learning Ryoga's name Cologne decided that she should take the direct approach to finding out what she wished to know in case another wave of customers came along soon and she was forced to return to work. "I wish to know your reasons for trying to fight Ranma Saotome." Cologne stated calmly as she took the seat opposite Ryoga.

Upon hearing Cologne's words Ryoga immediately became distrustful of her, for all he knew she was a friend of Ranma's gathering information on him on Ranma's behalf. "What's it to you?" Ryoga asked rudely, earning him a sharp smack to the side of the head from Cologne. "What the hell was that for?" Ryoga asked angrily as he rubbed the side of his head.

"For disrespecting your elder." Cologne said with a small smile, the fact that he was still conscious after that hit to the head spoke well of the boy's durability. "Now will you tell me why you wish to fight Ranma or do I have to beat you over the head again?"

Cologne's smile grew as she watched Ryoga making warding signs with his hands as he quickly agreed to talk to her. "I fought him a while ago and just when I thought I was going to win he used some strange technique that knocked me out. I want to find out what it was and how he did it and to do that I'm going to need to force him into using it again. If I'm lucky he'll have more than one technique that I can learn this way." He said, purposefully being ambiguous about the details of their last fight.

"So you wish to fight Ranma in order to force him into using the various special techniques that he knows?" Cologne summed up. "It seems that our goals are more or less the same. How would you feel about helping me? I'll even teach you a technique in order to help you out." Cologne said calmly before offering Ryoga her hand. As Ryoga grasped her hand firmly to seal the deal a large grin formed on her face, if she toughened Ryoga up and had him attack Ranma she would hopefully get a clearer picture of the extents of Ranma's abilities.

* * *

Ranko stood in a basic fighting stance in the middle of a large clearing facing off against Genma. She was dressed in a plain white gi that had picked up several grass stains during the short time that she had been sparring Genma. She watched Genma wearily as she struggled to regain her breath knowing that it wouldn't be long before he resumed their sparring match. She mirrored Genma as he charged towards her and the two met in a head on clash and started to exchange a flurry of blows once more. Genma had managed to quickly gain the upper hand of the exchange, just like he usually did, before sending Ranko flying backwards, putting yet another grass stain on her gi. Ranko got to her feet quickly and charged at her father once more. 

This was the third day of a planned two week training trip up in the mountains. The supposed purpose of the trip had been for Genma to teach Ranko some of the special techniques of the Saotome School but so far, with the exception of their current sparring match, they hadn't done anything that even resembled training. In fact all Ranko had done over the first two days of the trip was set up the camp, cook and argue with Genma. And to think that Ranma had actually wanted to come on this poor excuse for a training trip, though she reasoned that he probably would've enjoyed being here simply because it would have gotten him out of school for a couple of weeks.

Ranko jumped to the side just in time to dodge what would've otherwise been a particularly nasty kick to her stomach. Genma's failed attack had made it so that he was no longer facing Ranko and she was able to move in and score a few hits on him. Genma let himself take the full force of the blows in order to allow himself time to cut of Ranko's attack before she was able to gain too much momentum. With Ranko's attack broken Genma retaliated with his own only to met by Ranko's stubborn defence. After a minute of his assault making no progress Genma smiled and prepared to use a new tactic.

Genma's intentions had, honestly, been to train Ranko in some of the Saotome School techniques but when he'd outlined some of them to her she'd thrown them back in his face and started arguing with him, claiming that they were idiotic. He had been offended, how could she claim that techniques such as the fast break, the crouch of the wild tiger or the Saotome desperation strikes were idiotic. But it no longer mattered; he now had the perfect opportunity to show her how wrong she had been.

Genma broke of his attack and pointed to a random spot on the ground roughly ten metres away. "Look a hundred yen coin." He said with genuine excitement; the excitement coming from the mere thought of a hundred yen.

Ranko recognised Genma's ploy for what it was but turned to look at where he was pointing anyway, planning to use his own trick against him. Ranma had, inadvertently, taught her about this technique during one of his, thankfully infrequent, boasting sessions; Ranma had just used the trick on Genma and was in hysterics that Genma had actually fallen for a blind person using it on him. "Hey, you're right." Ranko exclaimed. Genma quickly ran to spot he had pointed at and dropped onto his hands and knees in order to search for the non-existent coin, completely forgetting about attacking Ranko. Ranko walked slowly over to Genma, who frantically increased his searching not wanting his daughter to get her hands on his money, before raising her foot into the air above his head and slamming it into the back of his head.

As Genma groggily got to his feet he couldn't help but feel proud, Ranko had managed to create a counter to the second of the Saotome desperation strikes. Maybe Ranko had the same potential as her brother. He momentarily thought about starting to teach her the two fighting styles he had created, to give her something to work towards, but quickly quashed the idea; he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice, besides he had technically sealed them.

After the cat fist training Ranma's progress in his training started to improve by leaps and bounds and after around a year and a half of this Genma, wanting to make sure Ranma kept his head on his shoulders, planned to show Ranma a technique or Style that he believed him incapable of learning. He had eventually decided on, and had shown, Ranma his two most powerful fighting styles, the umi-sen-ken and the yama-sen-ken. He believed his plan to have worked until two months later when Ranma demonstrated the ability to use both styles, even though he was unable to use them very effectively because of his limited speed and strength at the time. Since that was also the time that Ranma's lack of obedience towards him had started to noticeably diminish he believed showing Ranma the umi-sen-ken and the yama-sen-ken to be the cause. No, he wasn't going to make the same mistake twice; he wanted Ranko under his thumb as long as possible.

While this was going on inside Genma's head Ranko's thoughts hadn't been idle. She had realised that when Genma had created the techniques he currently wanted to teach her he had probably had himself in mind, she came to this conclusion because she couldn't think of anyone else stupid enough to fall for the trick he had tried to use. Because of this she had decided that it would be worthwhile to learn these techniques after all; they'd probably be useless in a real fight but they'd help her to keep Genma in line.

* * *

Akane sat on one of the, red vinyl covered, bench seats in an ice-cream parlour that was located a few minutes walk from the Tendo Dojo. As she placed another spoonful of her sundae into her mouth she looked over to the girl who was sitting across the table from her. If you were to choose a random group of people and ask them to describe her in three words, three words that would commonly appear would be: short busty redhead. 

This was the third time that Akane had met up with her since they had met, the day of Mousse and Kuno's fight, and so she still had much to learn about her new friend. Her name was Kaya Sasaki and she had been blind since birth, at least that's what Akane took "this body was created blind" to mean. If it hadn't already been clear to Akane that Kaya was, at least a little, eccentric by her use of some stranger mannerisms, "this body was created blind" had only been the tip of the iceberg, then it had been driven home by her hero-worshipping of Ranma; it apparently came from the fact that he had taught her his, or inspired her to create her own, she hadn't been clear on the details, blind fighting technique. While Akane could understand her being thankful towards him she felt that copying his appearance, which she pulled off quite well, and following him around, she was only in Nerima because Ranma was, was going way overboard; when she had told Ranma about her he had put it down to karma, if he could have someone trying to kill him for what he had done in the past why couldn't he have a worshipper. Akane wasn't bothered by the fact that she was eccentric at times because she was a nice person. In fact that only thing that bothered Akane about her in the slightest wasn't even her fault; Akane found her somewhat attractive, she hadn't been sure at first but had recently confirmed her feelings, and that made her feel a little awkward around her at times as she had never felt that way about another girl before.

"You worried about something?" Kaya asked Akane in between shovelling spoonfuls of ice-cream down her throat at a rapid pace when she heard Akane let out a sigh; Akane had been quieter than usual but she had, up until now, just ignored it believing it was nothing important.

Akane placed her spoon down on the table as she internally debated on whether or not to answer the question truthfully. She didn't normally like to share her insecurities with others but eventually decided that the truth couldn't hurt. "It's nothing really," she started hoping that verbally downplaying her feelings would weaken them "it's just that my friend, Ranko, has gone on a training trip with her dad to learn some of her family's special techniques. We've been training together for a while now and, as much as I hate to admit it, she's a better martial artist then I am and I'm just worried that I'm going to fall even further behind her and that'll she'll lose interest in training with me."

Not once had Kaya stopped methodologically devouring her ice-cream as Akane was talking, she had to make a quick transition between her second and third ice-creams in order to pull this off, and that didn't change as she pondered how to cheer her friend up. It took a while for her to come up with a way to help cheer Akane up, but she could be forgiven for that; she'd been too focused on savouring the taste of her food to be able to think efficiently. "If you wanted I could help you train a little." Kaya suggested happily as she placed her spoon onto the table, signifying that she was finally finished eating.

It took Akane a moment to let the words set in and when they did she couldn't help but stare at Kaya sceptically as she tried to work out if she had been serious or not. After a minute had passed and she was still unable to work out if Kaya had been serious or not Akane felt the need to verbalise her confusion. "You're joking right?" Akane asked, struggling to keep her voice even but failing miserably.

"There's no need to be so enthusiastic." Kaya replied a glare; while she was, technically, unable to glare her facial expression still managed to have the same effect and caused Akane to cringe back into her seat slightly.

"Sorry," Akane replied abashedly as she looked down at the table "it's just that the only thing you could teach me, that I know of, is a blind fighting technique which I don't have any use for." Even though Akane was fully convinced of her statement she was actually a little hopeful that Kaya wanted to teach her the blind fighting technique; she had been interested in how Ranma's worked ever since he had refused to give her, or Ranko, any information a few weeks ago in the dojo and Kaya's technique was bound to be similar to Ranma's, if not identical.

"It'd actually be pretty useful for you but it's not something I plan on teach you." Kaya said as she stood up without warning and made her way towards the door indicating for Akane to follow her.

Akane hurriedly got to her feet and fell into step behind Kaya; maybe it would be appropriate to add spontaneous to the list of things she knew about Kaya after today. "So, what are you planning to teach me?" Akane asked shortly after they had left the ice-cream parlour.

"Nothing much, I'll just try and help you improve an ability you can already use to a certain extent." Kaya said simply, happy to leave Akane guessing for a while what she'd be trying to teach her.

* * *

Genma walked through the dense undergrowth of the mountain's forest as he made his way to nowhere in particular, he simply wished to be away from the campsite for the time being. He had originally planned to put Ranko through extended hours of their normal training sessions combined with teaching her the techniques so that she would only just have enough time to learn the techniques before the end of the trip. However it seemed that he had not given her enough exercises to run through because she had already learned the techniques he wanted her to. This was why he didn't wish to be around their campsite at the moment, he wished to avoid Ranko until he was able to come up with something more constructive than running through a couple of exercises for her to do. 

The forest has been exceptionally quiet for the past few hours and so he was quite surprised when the sound of a large bang carried through the air. Since he presently had nothing better to do he started heading towards the direction he believed the source of the sound to be in, the direction in which several flocks of birds had simultaneously flown into the sky. After around twenty minutes he entered a large clearing that had a small flowing stream through the middle of it. The stream held no interest to Genma, what did interest him was the unoccupied campsite on the other side of the clearing. He moved quickly towards the two erected tents, planning to see if there was anything worth pilfering, but quickly fled back to the cover of the trees at the edge of the clearing as another explosion sounded through the air, seemingly coming from just on the other side of the clearing.

Genma stayed hidden behind the cover of the bushed for a few minutes waiting for any sign that someone had spotted him before starting to circle his way around the clearing to see what had caused the noise. He wanted to find out if the people who were staying at the campsite were dangerous, he assumed they were behind the explosions and thus thought it likely, because people tended to be hostile towards him; of course he conveniently chose to ignore that he gave people reasons to be hostile towards him, the act of theft he planned to commit shortly was a prime example. When he was on the opposite side of the clearing than before he heard to people conversing with each other, well to be more accurate one person was verbally abusing the other as they meekly protested. He silently crawled into a nearby bush that was close enough to the two people to hear them speaking clearly and pulled a few branches to the side in order to give himself an unobstructed, unobtrusive, viewing spot.

Roughly ten metres from where Genma was hidden a large, roughly spherical, boulder in a harness was being held a few metres off the ground by a particularly thick rope tied to one of the larger branches of the biggest trees in his sight. Suspended alongside the boulder was a young boy, with a yellow and black spotted bandana tied around his head, wearing dark green pants and yellow long-sleeved shirt, who was tied up so that he had only one arm free and the hand on that arm had been tied up with cloth so that his fingers, with the exception of his pointer finger, were balled into a fist. "Again." The boy said angrily as he stared angrily at a tiny old woman who stood atop the boulder.

Cologne, the old woman, was more than happy to comply with the boy's request. She reached out with her staff until it was touching one of the tree's other branches before pushing hard against it to send her, and the boulder she was on, away from Ryoga. When the boulder reached the peak of its swing it stopped momentarily before swinging back towards the boy like the pendulum it was at the time. From his viewpoint Genma was unable to discern what the boy tried to do but he clearly saw the result; the boulder collided with the boy with incredible force knocking the wind out of his lungs and causing him a lot of pain. To Genma the whole thing seemed close to torture. In other words he saw it for what it was; a bizarre training technique that produced great results because of its extremity. Just the type he liked.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Ryoga? You have to hit the breaking point." Cologne said as she reached down and tapped the boulder with one of her fingers before leaping off the boulder just before the boulder exploded and landing safely on the ground. Ryoga hadn't been fortunate enough to escape the blast, being tied up and all, and now sported several, slowly bleeding, lacerations over the entire front of his body from where the rock shrapnel had struck him. Ryoga slowly shook himself to his senses before wiping the blood, sweat and dirt from his face with his free arm eager to continue his training.

Genma was pulled out of his daze, the daze had been induced by learning that he was witnessing the breaking point training, by the sound of another boulder slamming into Ryoga's body. He briefly wondered how the boulder had been put into place, surely it couldn't have been the old woman's doing, before deciding that it didn't matter, he had to focus on learning the secret of the breaking point technique. With all thoughts of stealing from the campsite wiped from his mind Genma slowly started to move around in order to find a place where he could more clearly see Ryoga's movements. Since Genma's prying eyes and ears went unnoticed by Ryoga and Cologne Ryoga's training continued on and Genma was able to see Ryoga poking at the boulder with his finger several times, before he was promptly smashed by the boulder, but was unable to get even an inkling at how the breaking point was supposed to work.

Cologne had developed a growing ire as Ryoga continually failed to find the breaking point and she felt the need to bait him into trying harder. "How do you expect to even pose a threat to Ranma when you can't even learn such a simple technique?" Cologne asked snidely as she looked distastefully down at Ryoga's battered and bruised body.

Genma's excitement at having a chance to learn the secret of the breaking point left him, being replaced by worry, as he heard Cologne's words; this boy was obviously planning to attack Ranma using what he understood to be a lethal technique, the breaking point. He slowly snuck away, giving up on his chance to learn the breaking point in order to warn Ranma of what was coming as soon as possible.

* * *

Soun, Nabiki and Ranma sat around the table in the family room as they waited for dinner to be served; Soun and Nabiki with dreaded apprehension, the likes of which you would expect from a condemned prisoner, and Ranma with amusement, caused by their anxiety. Akane was cooking tonight. Even though she tried hard to make decent meal she always failed miserably and her family were either too polite, Kasumi, or too scared, Soun was a cry-baby and Nabiki was scared of how her temperamental sister may react if her barbed tongue were to slip, to say anything about it. So as it was all that could be done was to have Kasumi watch over her in order to prevent any potentially fatal mistakes; occasionally, when Akane was far out of earshot, Nabiki commented that that wasn't necessarily for the best, though that was sarcasm, at least mostly. 

Nabiki's mind was working frantically as she tried to think up a decent excuse to escape her impending fate; she usually knew when Akane was going to be cooking and made arrangements to be out of the house but this had been one of the few times she had no warning and had been herded to the table by Kasumi before she could escape. There had to be some way to guarantee her survival through this meal, after all if Ranma was able to survive… that was it Ranma was immune to Akane's cooking and since that wasn't natural for a human, then again maybe he wasn't human, to be able to eat Akane's cooking it must have been a weird martial art's technique that allowed him to eat it. All she had to do was get Ranma to teach it to her before dinner was served and she would be safe and, considering her motivation, she'd be able to learn anything almost instantly right now. It must be noted here that Nabiki's thoughts were both eccentric and erratic due to her belief that she may be about to eat her last meal.

"Hey Ranma, care to tell me what you did to let you eat Akane's cooking last time?" Nabiki asked as casually as she could manage, which wasn't all that much at the present moment in time.

Having already been on the receiving end of several of Nabiki's money making schemes, see blackmail and extortion, Ranma wasn't feeling inclined to answer Nabiki's question, not for free anyway. "How much is it worth to you?" Ranma asked curiously.

Nabiki had to think about that one and after deliberating long and hard, well not so long but hard, Nabiki stated her answer "Ten thousand yen." This was not a lie on Nabiki's part either; she was by no means a suicidal person wishing to end their life but if she spent more than ten thousand yen on anything she wouldn't be able to live with herself anyway, unless it wasn't her own money.

Even though Nabiki hadn't offered him very much money he accepted it anyway. He was only taking her money because he wanted to get money out of her for once and since he wasn't stupid enough to believe it likely for him to outsmart her he was going to make use of this opportunity. He waited until he had his cash in hand, he'd had to pry it from Nabiki's grip, before he started with his explanation. "The reason I can eat Akane's food so easily is because I've eaten a lot of food of only slightly better quality when I was wandering around China by myself. Do you know how hard it is to cook when you're blind, let alone over a campfire? Most of the things I cooked got burnt to a crisp because I couldn't smell them burning because of the smoke from the fire. The things that weren't burnt until they were probably beyond recognition were closer to being raw than cooked and that generally left me vomiting for a few days. On more then one occasion I even managed to grab something inedible and mix it in with my food by mistake. The great part was that I had to eat whatever I made, at least most of the time, because otherwise I would've starved. So all you need to do to be able to eat Akane's cooking no problems is eat it for month straight and after that you'll barely even notice it; it's not poisonous you just can't stomach it." Ranma said happily. He knew his answer wasn't what Nabiki had wanted and that she'd probably extort him even more from now on but that didn't matter, all that meant was that she'd be getting what small amount of money he had off of him slightly faster.

* * *

Ranma hit the pavement with a loud thump. He had just taken the scenic route to… wherever he happened to be now, i.e. he'd pissed Akane off and been sent skywards for it; he probably could have gotten away with his comments about her loving Mousse, who'd mistaken her for Shampoo and glomped onto her putting her into a bad mood, had he not added that Kuno would be crushed that she was breaking up with him and that Shampoo would probably want to kill her for making moves on both her men. He slowly peeled himself off of the sidewalk and started to rub the multiple bruises that were stating to form all over his body. Oh well, it'd been worth it. In fact he'd gotten off lightly, Ranko had returned the night before and he'd been unable to resist throwing in a couple of comments about Akane stealing Kuno from her but she'd apparently been happy with the beating Akane was dishing out and had let Akane deal out the punishment by herself. 

Since Genma had told Ranma that Ryoga was training in some technique, he hadn't really paid attention to the details, in order to beat him Ranma's mind had been trying to come up with a way to divert Ryoga's attack on him to Ranko and Akane. As of yet he had been unable to come up with anything but he didn't need a plan urgently yet as he figured he had at least a few days before Ryoga showed up. He slowly started to head back in the general direction he had come. He had a long walk ahead of him. Who knew, by the time he made it back to the Tendo's he may have had a solution to his problem.

He had walked around five blocks when he heard the shrill laugh that belonged to his, current, greatest annoyance, since Shampoo had started pestering Kuno to marry her Kuno no longer had time to try and kill the 'vile sorcerer', Kodachi. "Greetings my Ranma-sama." Kodachi greeted happily as she pressed herself into his back.

Ranma replied something to her absentmindedly even as he suppressed a shudder; Kodachi gave him the creeps. This was mainly due to three things: Her laugh, self explanatory. Her bondage fetish, she always tried to tie him up with her ribbon when he tried to run from her. And her _unorthodox concoctions _that could alter a person's bodily functions and probably even a person's mental state…

* * *

A/N: 

I'm sorry for the long delay between chapters. My university assignments took a fair bit longer than I had originally anticipated but I now have no more assignments for the rest of the semester. On top of that my inexperience at writing cropped up pretty badly in this chapter, I had some trouble putting my thoughts into words. I think most of it's alright but there a few small things that could have probably been done better.

I hope I haven't killed off anyone's interest in the story yet by having Ranma know the senkens. If it's any help I don't have any intentions of having him using them in the present, though there I have one planned use for the yama-sen-ken in a flash back that'll hopefully help to explain some of Ranma's actions.

People are probably going to bring up the fact that the senkens are sealed and so Ranma shouldn't be able to be taught them but it is my belief that Genma giving Ryu Kumon's father the yama-sen-ken scroll would be an event that fits into the ten years ago category. Since Genma wouldn't have given away the scroll if it was sealed it is my assumption that the senkens were only sealed within the last ten years and in the story I have Ranma having learned them around nine years ago so I'm assuming he learnt them before they were sealed.

That thing to allow Kuno and Shampoo out of being married. That's just there in case I want to get them out of it down the track but it definitely isn't going to be used anytime soon. The only effect it's going to have in the short term is to change Shampoo's attitude towards Kuno.

If people are wondering where Kaya Sasaki comes from. According to some forum I looked up Kaya is a popular Japanese girls name, or was a few years ago, and I got Sasaki from a downloaded list of the top five hundred Japanese surnames and surprise surprise I added them together. If you think it sucks, I personally don't think it's that great, feel free to suggest a better name because I suck at giving things names; hence why Ranko is named Ranko and the chapters haven't been titled, I think my bad summaries come from a related problem. I could name the chapters but there would be the risk that the names would suck and that some of the them may be the titles of songs that I feel have some relevance to the chapter. So if you think the chapters should be named just tell me so, though keep the previous sentence in mind.

It was pointed out in a review that I didn't show who Ranma went to while under the cat fist in order to calm down. This is because he won't go to anyone he prefers to avoid people and anyone who comes to close him will be swiped at.

As to Ranma being unable to use two ki techniques at once. That just comes down to my personal opinion really. I'm working with the assumption that the martial artist's inhumane strength, speed etc. comes from them subconsciously augmenting their natural abilities by focusing their ki within their bodies. Ranma's blind fighting technique is overriding this natural response and pushing his ki out from his body in order to sense things. The two are basically opposites so it's pretty much one or the other when it comes to that. Even if they could be done in unison that would require pushing however much ki out of his body to survey his surroundings, manipulating his ki to enhance his body and focusing on whatever else he was doing at the time; I think that's too big a task. Some techniques like the chest nuts roasting on an open fire technique (catchu tenshin amiguriken) would be able to be used in conjunction with the body's subconscious abilities because they would be quite similar. Make sense? If not, or you just don't agree, just put it down to my personal opinion.

Sorry for the long A/N. Next chapter will hopefully be done in the next three to four weeks.


End file.
